Go Down in Flames
by Death By Segway Scooter
Summary: [Post-Genisys] John had enjoyed a pretty normal life in this timeline. But he was in for a rather rude awakening when he forcefully learned that his dad's stories about killer robots and time travel were real.
1. The Bedtime Stories

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 1: The Bedtime Stories**

John Reese was five years old.

He had a pretty average life for a five year old. He lived with his mother, father, and grandfather in a small town in rural California. He went to kindergarten, liked to watch cartoons, played with with his friends from school, and all those sorts of things. There were a few strange things about his life, but being only five years old, he didn't recognize them as being strange - that is, unless somebody pointed it out to him.

For example, his grandfather, Pops, was actually a highly-advanced robot. So highly advanced, that most of the technology that made him was still in the process of being developed let alone tested. But John didn't think anything of this; he just assumed everyone had a humanoid robot in their family. So imagine his surprise (and hurt feelings) when the other kids at school didn't believe he had a robot grandpa. He was also disappointed when he went to his friends' houses, and the only robots they had were Roombas, toys, or the occasional remote-control drone that their older family members owned. Mommy and Daddy also didn't like it when John talked about Pops to other people; they said he shouldn't tell anyone about him. John didn't know why, especially since Pops was the one who usually picked him up from school. Couldn't anybody just look at the guy and tell he was a robot? But since he didn't want to get in trouble, John did what he was told and stopped talking about him.

Second, there was the basement, which Mommy and Daddy told John never to enter. Not that he could anyway; it was always closed with an electronic lock. They said it was full of dangerous things, things that little boys should not touch. John actually knew what those "dangerous things" were - he saw his mom get a shotgun from down there, once. Naturally, he assumed everybody had a dangerous basement full of guns, and was later surprised when some of his friends had their rooms in the basement. One time, he asked one of those friends where all their guns were. He then got in trouble when that friend's mom asked his mom why she had a basement full of weapons. He stopped asking about guns after that.

Third, Mommy and Daddy had a _ton_ of nicknames. John knew that his mom's real name was "Sarah" and his dad's real name was "Kyle" - but for some reason, they didn't want John to tell anybody that. Daddy said it was because bad guys knew their real names. John preferred calling them "Mommy" and "Daddy," anyway, so he didn't care much. He just figured he'd have to make a bunch of nicknames when he grew up, too.

Finally, there was Daddy's wacky bedtime stories. Dad loved to tell John stories at night about how he, Mom, Pops, and sometimes dad's friend who was also named John (whom little John was named after, Daddy would tell him proudly) fought an army of scary, killer robots and traveled though time.

John's favorite story was how Mommy, Daddy, and Pops beat the bad guys. They found the secret bad guy lair underneath a factory that made computers and robots. They went there to fight the bad guy leader...but before they could, the bad guy's leader sicced his nastiest minion on them: a scary, skinless monster! The skinless monster chased them everywhere, even by air in a helicopter! After Pops took out the monster's helicopter by jumping out and crashing into it, Mommy and Daddy landed at the factory. Mom and Dad sneaked into the factory, but it turned out that the monster was okay, and was in there waiting for them. Thankfully, Pops was okay too, and he managed to stop the monster for a few minutes by throwing a helicopter's propeller at it. Then, the three of them went down to the basement and set up bombs to blow up the bad guy's secret headquarters. But the monster got loose again, so they had to fight it. Pops managed to pin the monster down while Mommy and Daddy blew the place up! The monster was gone, and they thought Pops was gone, too. But surprise! Pops was okay! And then they all went out for ice cream. Or pizza. What they ate seemed to change every night.

The stories themselves weren't necessarily weird; in fact, they were probably less weird than half the cartoons John watched. But for some reason, Daddy didn't want John to repeat those stories to anybody else - especially not Mommy or Pops. Why he didn't want them told around Pops answered itself - Pops one time walked in on them, and kept correcting Daddy's story ("There were no giant piranhas, Kyle Reese," Pops had said. "The building was thirty stories, not fifty. You did not jump off of it. If you did, you would have been killed from the impact."). Daddy got annoyed, and decided to finish the story some other time. But Mommy? Daddy just said that Mommy might get mad at him for it. John just figured his mother's anger at a harmless story was just a "weird grown-up thing" and did as Daddy told him to.

* * *

Perhaps the first time John started realizing that perhaps his life was not entirely normal started when he heard his parents utter a very strange word: "Skynet." He had heard Mommy and Daddy quietly talking about it one day when he went into the kitchen to ask for a juice box. He heard Daddy whispering something along the lines of, "Sarah, don't you think Skynet would have done something by now?" to which Mommy answered with, "I just don't think Skynet is really gone."

He was about to walk in and ask what a "Skynet" was, but then he heard his cartoons come back from commercial. He didn't want to miss them. Just to be on the safe side, he decided to take a peek out the window.

It was sunny. The sky was blue, and there was no actual netting up there.

* * *

That night, as Daddy tucked him into bed, John suddenly remembered the weird name and decided to ask about it.

"Daddy what's a Skynet? Is it really a net in the sky?"

Daddy looked nervous. "John, where did you here that word from?"

"I heard you and Mommy talkin' about it earlier," John explained. "I was gonna ask earlier, but then I forgot. Anyway, is it a net in the sky that catches people? Is that why you and Mommy hope it's gone?"

"Uh, no, it's nothing like that," Daddy laughed nervously. "Skynet is, um...the leader of the bad guys."

"Oh, _that's_ his name?" John raised an eyebrow. "That's a really weird name..."

"Yeah, well...sometimes bad guys have weird names, I guess" Daddy explained.

"Is he bad because people make fun of him because of his name?" John asked, laughing.

"No...he's bad for other reasons," Daddy replied.

"Like what?"

"Doesn't like people."

"Oh." John didn't question this much. Most of the bad guys on TV were bad because they also didn't like other people in general.

"Anyway, don't tell your mom about this, okay?" Daddy added. "She doesn't like to talk about this kinda thing."

"Well...okay." John sighed. He didn't get why Mommy would be upset about something like that. Grown-ups were weird. "G'night, Daddy!"

"G'night, John."

That night, John had a dream about a giant net in the sky that was coming down to ensnare their whole town. Thankfully, Mommy, Daddy, Pops, and some other guy that John's subconsciousness recognized as Dad's Friend John shot it down with awesome purple lasers. Then they had pizza _with_ ice cream (but not ice cream on the pizza, because that would be just gross).

"Don't worry about things kid," the Other John said to him. "Your parents have everything covered."

John noticed there was a deep scar down the left side of his face.

* * *

While John was good about directly keeping the secret from his mother, Mom had a way of finding out anyway.

One day, John was in his room, just playing with his toys. He was acting out one of Daddy's stories, particularly his favorite. He had Pops (represented by a long-legged android figure that didn't look a thing like Pops), his dad (represented by a dog figure in armor with a shield and sword), and his mom (represented by a mermaid with an eyepatch and a spear) fighting a whole bunch of robot bad guys (represented by random toys, many of which weren't very robot-looking).

Thanks to Daddy, John now knew who the evil robots' leader was, so he had them confront Skynet itself (represented by a figure of a blonde catgirl in a black dress that neither John not his parents realized was sadistic villain from a very kid-unfriendly anime. Which was probably a good thing, because he really liked her toy). But then, Skynet summoned the Skinless Monster (represented by an ostrich-like bird plush) to protect him. John had the Pops figure challenge the monster, all while trying (and failing) to imitate Pops's accent. Pops managed to defeat the monster by tackling it and pinning it to the ground, which caused it to explode somehow. John then had his mom's figure say, "It's over Skynet!" while jumping up and down.

"What did you just say?" Mom's real voice suddenly said.

John jumped and found his mom in the doorway, glaring at him. Uh-oh.

"Umm...I was just havin' you beat up some bad guys, Mommy." John hoped that pointing out that he made her the main character would make her less angry.

"Yeah, and you called somebody 'Skynet,'" Mom replied, folding her arms. "Where did you hear that word?"

"Daddy told me," John said, worrying that he was going to be grounded for sure now. "He's the leader of the bad guys, right?"

Mom signed and rubbed her forehead, like she was getting a headache. "I should have known...," she grumbled.

"Are you mad at me?" John asked, sheepishly. He hoped Mom would have mercy if he gave her the sorriest eyes he could muster.

"No John, I'm not mad at you," Mommy sighed again. "But your father and I are gonna have a long talk when he gets home.

* * *

John's parents did eventually have that "talk," but it was more of a whisper. They holed themselves up in their room, and talked quietly enough so that John couldn't really hear them. All he heard was Mommy saying "I don't want him to end up like the last John." She sounded like she was about to cry.

This confused John. Did she mean Dad's Friend John? What happened to him that was so bad, that Mommy wanted to cry? Did he die? At that point, John heard Pops's heavy footsteps coming up the stairs, so he ran into his room to avoid getting into trouble. Pops rarely raised his voice, but he could be scary all the same. John couldn't hear his parents say anything else after that.

John went back to playing with toys, this time with nobody named "Skynet." But he just couldn't figure out why Mommy didn't want him to say that word. Skynet was supposed to be a really bad guy, so of course it would make sense that Mommy wouldn't like him. But to the point where John couldn't even use his name? Daddy's explanation of "Mommy doesn't like to talk about it" just seemed like a non-answer.

Did it have something to do with the Other John? Maybe Other John really _was_ dead, and it was Skynet who killed him! Maybe Mommy and Daddy were still sad that he died, and didn't even want to hear Skynet's name.

He suddenly heard footsteps coming down the hall. John put down his toys and looked up to see Mommy walking in the door. Thankfully, she didn't look angry now; she still looked sad.

"John," she sighed, "I'm sorry I yelled at you earlier."

"Okay, Mommy," John replied, kind of surprised at the sudden apology.

"It's just...I know you wanna fight the 'bad guys,' and that's good," his mom continued. "But don't go looking for trouble, okay? There are some really bad people out there, and they'll really hurt you."

"Is that what happened to Daddy's friend John?" he asked. "Did the bad guys get him?"

"What?!" Mom said, her anger returning. "Where did you-?!"

John instantly regretted asking. Thankfully, all that happened was his mother rubbing her face with her palm in an exasperated manner and saying, "John, don't listen in on me and your dad's conversations!" She then left the room.

That night, Daddy didn't tell him a bedtime story. He just said he didn't have time because he had to go to bed early. But John could tell he was still upset about the argument he had with Mommy earlier.

Daddy didn't tell him many more bedtime stories after that, either.

It was from that moment on that John realized that his parents were hiding something from him - and something big, too. But he was too young yet to figure out what it was.


	2. The Diary

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 2: The Diary**

John Reese was ten years old. Life continued to be pretty normal. He went to school, hung out with his friends, took karate lessons in the next town over, screwed around on the Internet, those sorts of things.

But he knew stuff was going on behind his back that was not normal at all. He was starting to worry that his parents were criminals...possibly even _terrorists_.

First of all, there was Pops. He knew by now that the military was the only one capable of making humanoid robots and mimetic polyalloy; and even then, none of them were sophisticated as Pops. Unlike today's current robots, Pops actually passed as a normal human being...well, until he tried to smile, anyway. Was Pops some sort of superweapon that his parents stole? Why did they do it, and who did they get it from?

One time, John tried to ask Pops where he came from. He tried to phrase it in the most innocent way possible, so that Pops wouldn't get suspicious and rat him out to his parents. John got a disappointing, "That information has been erased." Apparently, Pops had cleared his cache at some point and couldn't remember at all who built him, where he was built, or why. Any more prodding, and John was met with a "John Reese talks too much."

Second, there was the basement. John knew for some time that his parents kept guns down there, and that the electronic lock was to keep his younger self from crawling down there and shooting himself in the face. But John didn't realize how _many_ guns were down there until he sneaked down there himself one day. He managed to get the lock open using a password cracking app on his phone. When he turned on the lights, he found himself not at all ready to see the rows upon rows and overflowing shelves of every single gun imaginable. There was probably enough down there to take over a small country. He even saw things like rocket and grenade launchers.

John heard of people collecting guns, but this was ridiculous! Was Dad's wacky stories about fighting robot armies real, or something? When were they ever going to need this many weapons?! He didn't get much time to investigate, because at that moment, he thought he heard somebody coming, and had to beat a hasty retreat.

There was also the fact that Mom and Dad didn't like technology - or at least certain forms of it. They still had a computer that was connected to the Internet, though neither one of them used it that much (in fact, sometimes it seemed like they didn't know how). They didn't have any objections to John having a smartphone, nor did they mind him learning computer programming - in fact, they encouraged it, saying it would come in handy. And obviously, Pops was treated like part of the family, despite being a cybernetic superweapon. But all other robots were treated with suspicion, especially humanoid ones. Any sort of AI program really pissed them off for some reason. And they really got their hackles up when mimetic polyalloy made the news years ago. In addition, whenever some technology was announced that they didn't like, they'd be very scarce at home for awhile. "Overtime," they'd say. John used to like getting some alone time, but now it was just making him nervous. That "overtime" didn't involve blowing up buildings, did it?

But what really got John good and paranoid was when he accidentally came across his parents' (and Pops's) criminal records. He just put their names in a search engine one day, and up they came. According to the records, they caused a major accident on a freeway, escaped police custody twice, stole a school bus _and_ a police helicopter. They were also suspects in a shooting at a police station, as well as the bombing of a building. All of these were expunged, but that didn't matter much to John. What the _hell_ were they doing?!

John would be the first to admit that he was no perfect angel. He's played hooky numerous times, "borrowed" money a few times from his parents' bank account using his password cracker to find their PINs (it was only a couple of bucks! They'd never miss it!), and even punched a classmate in the nose for being a douchebag (he was trying to fight him over a CHAIR!). But outright terrorism was...something he frowned upon to say the least.

Unfortunately, the clues added up. All those guns. Multiple aliases. Not wanting John to talk about certain things, especially not to strangers. Wanting him to learn self defense at an early age (the karate classes were the easiest thing he ever got. He just asked out of the blue, and they both instantly agreed). He tried to tell himself that he might be jumping to conclusions. Maybe Mom, Dad, and Pops were awesome vigilantes who were fighting against some sort of shadowy criminal organization. Maybe that's where that "Skynet" guy came in - maybe he (or she? "Skynet" was a rather vague name) was the boss of this cartel, or whatever it was. But since his best alternate theory sounded like something straight out of a cartoon, he had trouble convincing himself.

That's why, on a day when his parents were both out of the house, and Pops was preoccupied with "yardwork" (his words, of course. What he actually did was walk around the perimeter of their property, seemingly looking for something to jump out at him), John found himself returning to the basement. Maybe there was something down there that could tell him more about what his parents were up to. He had no idea what he was going to do if he found out the worst; he was only focused on finding some sort of clue.

John already knew the password, so there was no need for the phone. He went right on down into the gun-filled depths, which seemed to have even more weapons than last time. He made sure to tread carefully; he didn't want to accidentally step on a land mine, or set off a flamethrower, or whatever else was down here.

There was desk in the corner of the room which had boxes of bullets all over it. John walked over and started rifling through the drawers. He finally found paydirt in the form of a notebook which was buried under more boxes of bullets. He opened it up to its first page - or what was now its first page. John noticed some scraps on the edges that indicated that some pages had been torn out. Either way, he found out that it was a journal kept by his mother.

 _The Cyberdyne building was destroyed. Hopefully, Genisys went down with it. I don't see how it could have survived after an explosion like that, but I can't help worrying about it._

Genisys? John had heard of it, or at least, had heard of the controversy surrounding it. Genisys was the first app that could sync almost any devices together. It was also supposed to come with an AI assistant. It was nothing compared to today's apps which could sync your lawnmower to your coffee machine if for some odd reason you wanted to do that. But the reason it hadn't been long forgotten in a sea of similar programs is because of what happened right before it was supposed to be released: the headquarters of its manufacturer, Cyberdyne Systems, got blown up. Conspiracy theories ranged from corporate sabotage to insurance fraud to anti-technology terrorism.

Did Mom just admit to blowing the place up herself? She didn't outright say that she did, but...

John kept reading.

 _Kyle's taking it hard. He's trying to pretend that it doesn't bother him, but I can tell it'll be awhile before he gets over John's death. I wish there could have been another way, but I just don't see what we could have done for him._

He assumed that the John mentioned here was Dad's friend John - the "Other John." So he _had_ died. This John always figured he had, because if he wasn't, then why didn't he ever come visit once in awhile? In Dad's bedtime stories, the explanation was that Other John had been left in the future when Dad went time travelling. But those stories were just Dad talking shit. Now it sounded like they might have been a coping mechanism.

Still, he wondered how the Other John died. Did he get blown up? Did he get squashed when the building collapsed? John turned the page to find out more.

 _Talked to the "other" Kyle today to tie up loose ends. We hope it works._

 _Talked to O'Brien too. Said he might get our names cleared. After John's rampage in the police station, the cops are a little more willing to believe our story about the killer robots._

 _Need to look for a new place to stay. Somewhere where there's not too many people._

This mysterious "Other Kyle" caught John's eye, but only for a second...because what was this about the Other John "rampaging" through a police station? Is _that_ how he got killed? Fighting the law, and the law winning?

He kept reading, trying to see if he could get anything more.

 _SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT_

 _CYBERDYNE RELEASED GENISYS ON THE INTERNET ANYWAY WITH NO WARNING_

 _SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT_

 _WE ARE SO FUCKED_

"Well, _damn_ Mom!" John muttered to himself. Really, what was so bad about a little sync app? She didn't act that way around the new ones!

The next entry was dated a few weeks after the last one.

 _False alarm. Genisys was released, but without the AI attached to it. It just hooks up computers now. We couldn't find any trace of Skynet in it._

 _Now that I think about it, I probably should have known. I didn't come across this until days after it happened, and no nukes flew. Still, it's best to keep an eye on what's left of Cyberdyne, especially since I hear they're gonna immediately rebuild. Skynet should be gone, but I still don't trust it._

Oh, that was why.

John figured that Skynet had to be a real person based on his parents' reactions; they wouldn't want him to talk about the guy if he wasn't. More than likely, he didn't have an army of killer robots at his beck and call like Dad said he did, but he probably was a very dangerous person. What did he have to do with Genisys, though? And _nukes_? John had to read that sentence a couple times to make sure he read it right. Who the hell has _nukes_ lying around?!

The next entry was dated the following year and was about something very different entirely:

 _I just found out I'm pregnant. Kyle's happy, of course. Pops is...the robot equivalent of being happy. Naturally, the both of them want me the name the baby "John Connor," but I don't. We don't even know if it's a boy, yet!_

 _I hate to say this, but I'm not happy - I'm scared. I just don't want what happened to the last John happen to this one - or any kind of offspring I have._

It sounded like Mom was taking Other John's death rather hard, which was kind of strange, considering he was supposed to be _Dad's_ friend. John had a feeling there was a bigger picture he was missing - something Mom didn't even want to write down, let alone talk about.

He turned the page to an entry dated months later:

 _We found out that it IS a boy. But we've reached a compromise. We WILL name him John, but ONLY if he gets his Daddy's last name._

 _I don't know if changing the name will help anything, but I hope it does._

Again, John felt like he was missing something here. What did his name have to do with anything? It is true that if he had his Mom's surname, his full name would be identical to Other John's; Dad told him his last name was "Connor" a long time ago. Was Mom afraid that giving him the same name would end up in him getting killed, too? Superstitious much, Mom?

That's when John heard the back door open upstairs. Time to go! He ran up the stairs, turned the light off, and hid in the living room before anybody could tell he was down there.

* * *

For a few days, John tried to digest what he just read. He was sort of glad that his theory about his parents being vigilantes was looking more likely, but he wanted to know for sure. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know who exactly Skynet was, what this person had to do with Genisys (and nukes?), and what exactly happened to the Other John.

Trying to take things to the Internet had mixed results. Searching for "Skynet" brought up everything from an anti-terrorist military program to an airline, but no crime bosses or terrorist organizations. Searching for "John Connor" was almost as fruitless, thanks to how common both those names were. However, John did find _something_ interesting when he added "Cyberdyne" after the name: some old news articles from 2017 revealed that there had been a John Connor working for said software company. He went missing the day the building was blown up. There was lots of speculation that he had been in the building when it was destroyed, but his body was never found. But whether this was Dad's friend that he spoke so highly of or just some poor, unlucky bastard with an identical name was too hard to tell.

What John really wanted to go back down to the basement and read more of Mom's diary. But every time one of them was working all day, the other always seemed to have the day off.

Thus, John considered weaseling information out of them directly. Just ask one of them an innocuous-enough sounding question and see if they take the bait. Mom was a bad idea; she'd immediately figure out what he was doing and get pissed. Pops was also a bad idea; he was tight-lipped about everything, and robots don't crack under pressure. Dad, however, slipped before and told him about Skynet years ago. More than likely, he'd do it again, right?

John waited patiently for an opportunity to get his dad alone. That opportunity came one afternoon when Dad went out to the garage by himself to mess around with the lawnmower. John followed him out there, making sure Pops wasn't coming, too. When the coast was clear, he walked up to Dad, pretending to act casual.

"Hey, Dad," John said as nonchalant as he could.

"Hey, what?" his dad replied, suspecting nothing.

"I was just wondering...how come you never invite your friend John over?" John asked.

His dad shot him an odd look. "Wait...who?"

"Y'know, your old best friend, John," John continued. "The guy you named me after?"

Dad got that nervous look all over his face again. "Oh! Right, John," he stammered. "Uh, what about him again?"

"How come you never invite him over?" John asked again. "You used to tell me how much you guys used to be such great friends, and stuff. Does he live too far away, or something?"

"Well, you see son," Dad said with a nervous smile, "when I traveled to this time period, I left-"

"Aw c'mon Dad, we all know that whole time travel thing is bullshit!" John interrupted.

"No it's n-I mean, language!" Dad retorted. His gaze then shifted to the ground, and he fidgeted uncomfortably. "We don't invite him over because...because he's dead." John could still hear the sadness in Dad's voice about it, despite the fact that it happened many years ago.

"Oh, okay," John said softly. "So, um...what happened to him?"

Dad took a deep breath and stared at a distant wall. "A few years before you were born, he...umm...he had a heart attack, and didn't make it. Even though John was actually a lot older than me, he still died way too young. Wasn't even fifty." Dad finally looked John in the eye. "It's a shame, really. I'm sure you would've liked him!"

John could easily see from the weird pauses and lack of eye contact that Dad was bullshitting him. "You sure about that Dad?" he asked. "He didn't die in, say...an accident?"

"...A what?" Dad looked confused.

"An accident," John explained. "Like, say, a building collapsing on him?"

Dad went front looking confused to shocked to angry. Dad usually didn't get angry, at least not at him. "How did you-? Who told-?" he started to say before he gave up and rubbed his face with a palm. "Let me guess, the Internet? Look, John, you're asking about stuff I don't wanna talk about. Let's just drop it and not speak of this again. And don't go asking your moth-"

"I know about Genisys," John cut him off.

Dad's eyes became wide for a second before he started leaning against the lawnmower, looking defeated. "Please tell me you're talking about that old band your mother sometimes listens to," he moaned.

"I'm talking about the app from Cyberdyne that mysteriously blew up right before it launched," John corrected him. "Be honest. You guys blew it up, didn't you? Look, I ain't gonna tell anybody!"

Dad just leaned against the lawnmower, face in palm, mumbling, "Oh God, oh God, oh God..." to himself.

"If it had to do with that Skynet dude, I can understand," John continued. "I get the impression that he's like a real-life supervillain, or something. If he was gonna blow up everybody's computer using Genisys, I'd probably do the same thing!"

Dad just stood there in silence.

 _Welp. That did it. I broke him,_ John thought.

Dad just sighed and said, "It really is useless to try and hide anything in this day and age, isn't it?"

He stopped leaning on the lawnmower and continued. "Skynet isn't a person, really. It's complicated. But yeah, Skynet was going to use Genisys to take over as many computer systems as it could before launching missiles everywhere. To make a long story short, me, your mom, and Pops all found out about this. No one in their right mind would believe us, so we had to go down to Cyberdyne headquarters ourselves." He started talking in a lower voice. "We had to blow the place up in order to stop it. John was with us and he got killed in the process. We wish it didn't have to be that way, but we had no other choice. Satisfied?"

"Kinda," John answered. "Like, how come you guys keep everything a big secret? How come you guys don't want me even _talking_ about Skynet?"

"Well, I kinda _did_ tell you," Dad replied. "Remember your favorite bedtime story?"

"The one where you fought the skinless thing and blew up the building? That wasn't bullshit?"

"Again, _language_. No, that was true...most of it, anyway. But that's the reason we didn't just come out and tell you - we figured you either wouldn't get it, or think we were making things up."

"Well, when you _didn't_ tell me, I thought you were terrorists who were blowing up buildings for shits 'n' giggles!"

"Right, well, I'm telling you now. We're not terrorists, we just needed to stop something that was very dangerous. And we did. That's another reason we didn't tell you: we're pretty sure Skynet is gone now, so there's no reason to make you worry about it. We just want you to have the normal life that we never got to have." Dad's gazed shifted to the floor. It was a gaze that said, "...And never will have."

"... _Pretty_ sure?"

"Well, we _were_ trying to get out of a building about to blow. We never got to make sure that Skynet was gone for good. And every once in awhile, technology that Skynet used pops up in the news."

"Y'mean like that polyalloy crap?"

"Yeah, like that. We've tried to look into that stuff whenever it comes up, but...we can never find any connection to Skynet when it does. That, and we know that Skynet is not the type of 'guy' to just let us go. It would have tried to kill us all by now - it tried to lots of times before."

John was about to ask for details when the door suddenly swung open, making them both jump. Pops was standing in the doorway giving them his usual stony gaze.

"Lunch is ready," he said simply. It was so anticlimactic, John had to stifle a laugh.

"Oh, right," Dad said, looking embarrassed. "Um...yeah, we'll be there in a minute, Pops."

Pops left the doorway, but not before giving them both a look that told them that he was onto them. Sometimes it was amazing how much the cyborg could convey in a single glare.

Dad waited until Pops was (hopefully) out of earshot when he turned and said to John, "This goes without saying, but don't tell your mother I said any of this."

"Like hell I will," John scoffed. "I remember what happened last time I said 'Skynet' in front of her!"

"Right...well, your mom just doesn't want anything to happen to you," Dad explained. "Every time somebody she knew got hurt or killed, she'd blame herself for it. Kept saying how everybody she loves dies. No amount of telling her it's Skynet's fault convinces her. To this day, she's scared to death somebody will kill you just because your her son."

John didn't know how to respond to that. That was a side of his mother he never knew.

"Anyway, enough about Skynet," Dad said, trying to lighten the mood. "That asshole's dead anyway, so who cares? Let's go get that lunch before Pops starts wondering where we are!"

The two of the left the garage for the kitchen. While John didn't regret asking his Dad, he realized he had an awful lot to digest besides grilled cheese sandwiches.

* * *

That night, John dreamed he was walking around some sort of factory. The floors and walls were all metal, and there were metal catwalks everywhere. The whole place was bathed in a blue glow. He couldn't readily tell what was being manufactured here; must have been one of those action movie factories.

He came to a huge room with a giant machine in it. Two curved columns - one rising up from the floor and the other coming down from the ceiling - met in the middle and were connected by two concentric metal rings. There, John saw a man standing inside those rings.

John walked up a long catwalk that lead right up to the strange device. As he got closer, he could see that the man was wearing what looked like military gear. He had messy, somewhat curly black hair that looked like it hadn't been groomed in awhile - kind of like his own hair when he first gets up in the morning! The man's back was turned to John, arms crossed. Once again, John subconsciously knew this was the Other John.

"It's really great that you wanna fight the bad guys like me, kid," he said. "But you're a bit too young for that kinda thing right now. Like I said, your parents got everything covered. Don't go picking any fights, okay? At this point, you'd never win."

The man turned his head and looked at John over his shoulder. His scar was bleeding heavily.


	3. The Investigation

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 3: The Investigation**

John Reese was fifteen years old.

His life was still relatively normal, even though he now knew some of his parents' sketchy past. He was now in high school, and was taking a lot of coding and programming classes. He was also learning how to drive, and was looking forward to getting his license, even if it was just a provisional one. He was still taking his karate lessons, as his parents insisted that self-defense was important.

Recently, however, his mother started to teach him some survival skills. The karate lessons were good and all, but she wanted him to know how to do other things, too...just in case. She taught him things such as picking locks and even how to stitch up a wound. Sometimes on weekends, his she would take him out to the countryside and teach him how to use some of the multifarious guns that she owned. John was okay with this, as he now knew why his parents were always looking over their shoulders.

And the thing that had them jumping at shadows this time were called by many different names: nanomachines, nanobots, nanites, or the clunky "machine phase matter" that Pops referred to them as. But they all boiled down to one thing: microscopic machines manipulating stuff at the molecular level. They had showed up in the news recently, as several different universities and private companies had suddenly developed them. Oddly enough, none of them were Cyberdyne.

Mom and Dad weren't happy. They wouldn't tell John about it to his face, but they didn't need to; John had played enough video games and read enough comics to know how those things could be dangerous. Still, they seemed to be more agitated than last time. Were they really that scared of grey goo?

As if on cue, both his parents started "working late" again, sometimes gone for days at a time. Pops became more active too; John spotted him going outside sometimes, patrolling the perimeter of the house as if to catch someone trying to sneak in. He still insisted he was just doing "yardwork."

John still worried about his parents a little bit. For the most part, he believed Dad's story that they were just trying to stop that shady Skynet guy. Dad wasn't a very good liar, so if it was all bullshit, John would have easily figured it out by now. But at the same time, he worried that they were going to end up blowing something up again. He really didn't want them getting hurt, or possibly even killed if they didn't make it out this time. The possibility of them getting caught and arrested again wasn't a pleasant thought, either.

More than anything else, however, he felt sorry for them. It was obvious their tangle with the mysterious Skynet left them seriously paranoid. For over fifteen years now, they're been freaking out about random technological advances, then risking life and limb to make sure someone who was probably long dead wasn't hatching some horrible new scheme. And they'd probably keep doing it too, up until they day they died. John wished there was a way he could break the vicious cycle; find a way to prove to them once and for all that Skynet was either dead or alive.

But how would he do that? Where would he even start?

Well, he could go to the place where this all started: Cyberdyne Systems. After all, Dad told him that they were too busy trying to get out of the building, and never got a chance to see if Skynet was truly dead. Maybe he or she or...they(?) were still pretending to work there.

A quick Internet search told him that Cyberdyne quickly rebuilt their headquarters after his family blew it up all those years ago. However, after the Genisys debacle, Cyberdyne realized that they were putting all their eggs in one basket. The replacement building sitting there now was just an office building; the new R&D labs were located elsewhere.

It sounded like a waste of time to go there, but John wasn't totally convinced it was. Photographs revealed that it was still a pretty big place; does a computer and software manufacturer need that much space for just paperwork? There had to be _some_ development going on in there.

It just so happened that this place was the easiest to get to, too. The nearest train station made a stop right in Cyberdyne's neighborhood. John figured that he ought to sneak in there and just take a quick look around. Look for anything suspicious. He was now fairly good at sneaking into places. Before, he had easily sneaked into his parents' locked basement, or occasionally sneaked out of school. Now that mom taught him how to pick locks, he found himself sneaking into a few usually locked places, like the school basement, or abandoned homes and buildings. His intentions weren't malevolent, of course; he just wanted to see what was in there, maybe take a few pictures. "Urban exploration" somebody called it. Once, he even broke back into school just to get some homework he forgot in his locker. His friends sometimes teased him about being the world's most boring burglar. Ironically, the only place he had trouble sneaking into was his own house late at night. It was almost impossible to get around Pops, who didn't sleep and could see in the dark. So as long as Cyberdyne didn't have anything like Pops as security guards, it shouldn't be too difficult to get in there.

That is, of course, if Mom and Dad hadn't already checked the place out. Dad said they didn't know if Skynet survived when they originally blew up the place, but...did they ever go back there after the place was rebuilt? He would think that they would have returned there at least once. He also figured that this place would be at the top of their list to check, even if it wasn't one of the places trying to build nanites. John wasn't too sure how to go about finding that out. Were they keeping a list somewhere?

John slipped down to the basement to check his mother's journal. Her last entry was written a few years ago about how frustrated she was that couldn't find any evidence of Skynet being behind the production of mimetic polyalloy. She was convinced he was alive and behind it, because it was one of his signature technologies. However, everywhere she went, she met a dead end. All of the places she visited did buy the patents from Cyberdyne, but they did so a long time ago, not long after the Genisys incident (no doubt to cover the costs to rebuild after she demolished the place). All of the paperwork showed that the places bought the formulas from high-ranking people who actually worked at Cyberdyne; they didn't just find it one day or buy it from a mysterious third party. She also noted how the polyalloy was simply being used as a self-healing coating, and not used to make shapeshifting robots like Pops.

She admitted that she would sometimes try to burn the stashes of polyalloy or throw acid on it, earning another "Damn, mom!" from John. She wrote that it reminded her of "HIM." John had no idea who "HIM" was referring to, but since he couldn't find a list, he put the book away.

As the day wore on, John started rethinking his little visit to Cyberdyne. But, as fate would have it, he came across his mother's duffel bag late that night after she had already gone to bed. He opened and took a peek inside. He thought he saw a glint of white underneath her things; paper, maybe? Knowing that there was at least one loaded gun in there, John carefully dug around and fished out the object. It was a notebook. Written right on the front page was a list of companies, some of which John recognized from the news articles - they were all the businesses that were involved in developing nanomachines.

Cyberdyne was actually on the list, but it was toward the middle. It hadn't be crossed out yet, and it looked like there was at least six or seven more labs to go before his parents checked them out. Looks like his little investigation was good to go.

Wanting to take advantage of his parents' scarcity, John decided to go the very next weekend. Of course, he still made sure to do some planning. He was going to wait until everybody was gone, and then leave a note that he needed to go to the library to work on a school project. He would explain that it was a big project, so he was going to be gone for a long time. He was going to make sure he brought his phone with all its electronic lock-disabling apps, his tools for fiddling with locks, and a large LED flashlight.

As the big day drew nearer, however, John felt himself getting cold feet. This wasn't like slipping into an empty house or abandoned barn; he was going to sneak inside a major business's office building with security guards and cameras and everything. Even though he was just going to go in there for a look around, he could get into some serious trouble if he got caught. He kept telling himself "Don't get caught then!" but that provided little comfort.

And what would he do if he actually found this Skynet person? What would Skynet guy do to him if he was the one that caught him? What if other parts of Dad's stories weren't bullshit, and this guy really did have armies of robots? What if he had skinless monsters, too?

Just to be on the safe side, John sneaked on down to the basement, grabbed himself a light pistol, and loaded it with a few bullets. He would take that with him just in case he saw something that might be a killer robot. It was a big risk; he could get himself in some deep shit if he was caught with a gun when he wasn't old enough to own one, and it wasn't even his. Even deeper shit if he got caught with it while breaking into the Cyberdyne building. _If_ he got caught, which he still didn't plan on doing.

He also slipped a bar magnet into his backpack, too. The skinless monster was supposedly weak against magnets. He almost considered hooking it up to a bunch of batteries and making it an electromagnet before he started berating himself for believing in such nonsense. Still, he kept the magnet with him for good luck.

* * *

The day had finally come.

Both of John's parents were thankfully "working overtime" that Saturday, which got them both out of the house early that morning. After breakfast, Pops posted himself outside as usual. Once everybody had cleared out, and after he checked to make sure he had everything, John put the note on the table. He then headed for the door, fighting every last temptation not to go.

He made sure Pops was scouting the backyard when he headed outside. If John told the old cyborg that he was just going to the library, then Pops would surely want to take him there, ruining the whole thing. Just to be on the safe side, he walked quickly but as quietly as he could away from the house to make sure he didn't get spotted. Once he figured he was out of sight, he hurried on down to the bus station, looking over his shoulder the whole time. Even when the bus arrived to pick him up, John felt like he couldn't relax. He pushed aside the creepy image of Pops chasing the bus down and grabbing onto it by making his arms into hooks.

He took the bus to the local monorail station, then boarded the next train to the city. He was starting to get nervous again. He had been to Los Angeles before for school field trips, but never by himself. But he made it this far, so there was no turning back now.

After a few stops, the monorail arrived at the station near Cyberdyne. Though this was only the outskirts of the big city, John still felt overwhelmed when he saw all the crowds. Still, he tried to play it as cool as possible; didn't want anybody thinking he was a dumb hick.

He awkwardly made it out of the crowded monorail station and out into the much more crowded streets. He felt himself getting overwhelmed again by the huge buildings, the narrow streets, the noisy traffic, and the sheer amount of people. John leaned against a wall and looked up a map of the neighborhood on his phone to try to figure out the best way to get from here to Cyberdyne.

While getting bringing up a map was easy, there was still a problem in that it was on a tiny screen. He had to keep alternating between squinting at his phone and looking, which often caused him to bump into people. Zooming in would cut off most of the picture, and he had to stop a lot to adjust his screen. He was starting to wonder if he should have done the primitive thing and printed out the directions instead.

After a few bouts of getting distracted, disorientated, or just plain turned around, John started asking for directions to Cyberdyne. He got a few...interesting answers.

One person asked him why he was going there. John told him it was for a job interview; after all, he looked old enough to work. The guy told him where to find the place, but told him he was better off finding a job somewhere else. The place was cursed, he said. Ever since the place was rebuilt, the people who worked there - or even lived in the neighborhood - started mysteriously disappearing over the years. If any bodies were found, they were all horribly mutilated. To this day, no one's ever found the culprit; there were no clues as to where the victims went, and no evidence that pointed to anybody. In fact, at least one police detective who was working on the case vanished, too!

Another person told him to make sure he got out of there by nightfall. There were rumors of some kind of giant creature that flies around the Cyberdyne area in the middle of the night. She called it the "L.A. Dragon." A few other people confirmed the "dragon" story, one guy even claiming he saw the "dragon" when he was working a third shift job near Cyberdyne's campus. One person hypothesized that the "dragon" was the one responsible for the disappearances in that area; it would catch anybody who was out after midnight and eat them. Another person said it was probably some experimental drone that Cyberdyne was secretly working on with the government.

A quick check on the Internet confirmed that the missing persons rumors were at least true. Over the past ten years or so, Cyberdyne employees had, in fact, vanished without a trace. Most of them simply didn't come into work the next day. However, one woman went out on her lunch break and never returned. A particularly creepy story told of a security guard that entered a room during his rounds one night and never walked back out. The most recent incident there was when a department manager suddenly skipped a few days of work without notice after a doctor's appointment. She returned a few days later, claiming she had actually tried to notify everyone about her absence, it was just that her email didn't go through.

John also found that some people around this neighborhood had also disappeared just as suddenly, and the local police had no clues as to where they had gone. Sometimes they would find the body of one of those missing people turn up horribly mutilated and partially eaten. These bodies were always found miles away in the woods somewhere, and they were all ruled as animal attacks.

The "dragon" rumors, however, were definitely nonsense. The Internet didn't turn up anything on an "L.A. Dragon" that except for clickbait articles on the "Craziest Things People Believe," or "The Most Ridiculous Conspiracy Theories." John had to agree with that last one. When he was a kid, people would at least scrape together a somewhat plausible plot behind their bullshit theories, or take advantage of a common fear in order to get suckers to believe them. This sounded like something someone randomly pulled out of their ass and hoped people would fall for it. Were people these days even trying anymore?

But he had wasted enough time. John switched back to his maps and got back to searching for Cyberdyne. Following the directions from the various people he talked to, he soon came upon some very familiar territory.

He was currently looking at a circle of tall buildings surrounding an artificial lake. The campus sported well manicured lawns and posh landscaping. He didn't know why, but he knew this place. He felt as though he had been here before, many times, long ago. Had he been here before on one of his childhood field trips before? No, that would be impossible; they went to museums on field trips, this was a random industrial park.

John pushed his way through the crowd and crossed the street at the nearest light. He walked right into the middle of the circle of buildings and headed toward the northernmost one. He didn't need his phone nor any directions; he _knew_ where Cyberdyne was.

In moments, he stood right in front of the building. Somehow, he knew that the building's facade has changed and that the bricks were a shade darker than they used to be. He somehow knew that fountains had replaced pyramid-like decorations. He somehow knew that the triangular logo had not changed. He felt nostalgic standing here. Why? How could he know all about this place when he's never been here before?

He was wasting time again. John brushed off the bizarre, nonsensical feelings and tried to figure out how to get in. It was Saturday, so there shouldn't be many people inside. Still, walking through the front door would probably be a very bad idea. John walked around the perimeter of the building to check for a side door.

There didn't seem to be any doors on the eastern wall, so John continued on to the back. Behind the building was a parking lot with a small handful of cars. He saw a loading dock back here, too. He stayed on the outside edge of the lot, just in case the place had security cameras outside. It wouldn't surprise him if they did, given all the PR nightmares they've had.

John ducked behind a small group of bushes and peered at the back of the building. There was a line of tall windows back here, and he thought he saw a back door among them. Sure enough, one of those "windows" turned out to be a glass door, which opened as a man stepped outside.

The man was now walking to his car. He was tall, thin, light-skinned, with slicked-back hair. He was wearing a grey suit, and John thought he could see a little bowtie around his neck. A pretty average-looking guy.

But as average as he seemed, he scared John to death.

John found himself ducking down and hiding under the bushes, waiting for the strange man to leave. He felt cold all over and trembled like a leaf. His breath came in such rapid gasps he was nearly hyperventilating. He didn't know what it was, but something about that man was completely and utterly _wrong_.

 _Don't let him see you, don't let him see you, DON'T LET HIM SEE YOU._

 _If he sees you he will catch you._

 _If he catches you, you will die._

Moments later, John heard a car start up. He waited until he heard it drive away before he finally sat up. The man and one of the cars was gone.

John sat down and buried his face in his palms. He couldn't do this. He took one look at a random Cyberdyne employee, and he was ready to piss himself! He might as well turn around and go home. Why did he think this was a good idea in the first place? If John had been a few minutes earlier, that man would have caught him, and he would have gotten in huge trouble. Besides, Cyberdyne wasn't even one of the companies making nanomachines. And even if they were, they'd be making them at their R&D labs, not here.

John let himself calm down a little, and thought it over some more. No, he _had_ to do this. He had to try to find evidence that this Skynet person was either still around, or gone for good. Otherwise, his parents would be fighting shadows for the rest of their lives. Yes, it was risky; he was about to break into a place that wasn't abandoned for once. But it was a risk worth taking so that his family would no longer be living in fear of someone who probably died seventeen years ago. And yes, Cyberdyne wasn't making the nanomachines, and yes this was only an office building, but it didn't matter. This building was the last place Skynet was seen alive, and it may still have clues as to what happened all those years ago.

He was reminded of someone else, too. Dad said that this is where the Other John died...the man John was named after. No doubt he made some kind of noble sacrifice, making sure his family could escape before the building collapsed. He wouldn't want to see John's parents like this, completely miserable and paranoid. He wouldn't want to see them get arrested again or have to blow up another building. If John chickened out now and went back home, he'd be letting down his namesake too, in a way. Yes, he also had to do this for Other John; he couldn't let his sacrifice be in vain.

He slowly stood up and stepped out of the bushes. He got both his phone and his flashlight ready. He started walking across the parking lot, shining his flashlight at anything that looked like it might be a security camera to hide his face. He marched up to the door, and used the PIN calculator on his phone to unlock the door.

He got it unlocked, and he stepped inside. Easy money. The door clicked shut behind him. He did it. He was inside Cyberdyne. Now what?

He was standing in a hallway. A hallway he swore he saw before. The air conditioning wasn't on, but he felt cold as hell, anyway.

They came to him. Thoughts - possibly memories - formed in this place from other lifetimes or other states of being. He did see this hallway before from somewhere. And he knew that if he was looking for anything related to Skynet, they would be in the basement.

John decided to trust this bizarre instinct; it helped him find this building in the first place, didn't it? He quietly slipped through the hallways that he had vague memories of, despite never setting foot in this building before. He shined his flashlight in security cameras that he just knew were there. But this instinct of his could only take him so far, and he found himself stopping at an office tucked away in a corner. The nameplate read "Alex M."

This office was not supposed to be here. The hallway was supposed to go on a few more feet and end in with a doorway to the basement. What was he going to do now? Maybe there was another door somewhere close by?

That's when John heard footsteps. Somebody was coming his way. Maybe a security guard noticed all the bright lights in the cameras. John tried the door to the office in front of him. It was unlocked. He slipped into the office and locked the door behind him.

If this office was being used, John would never have guessed it. The whole place was bare. The other offices he had passed had posters all over the walls, shelves lined with books, and desks covered in paperwork and photos of the family. This place had none of it. There was the company-issued laptop on the desk, and that was all.

But there was one thing this office had that others lacked; a door on the opposite side sporting a big sign that read "AUTHORIZED EMPLOYEES ONLY." His strange memories told him that this door was right where the old basement door was. Maybe it _was_ the old basement door?

John walked across the room and tried the knob. Locked, and not electronically this time. No problem. He took his lockpicks out if his backpack, and went to work. It took a few tries, but when he heard that satisfying "click," he knew he was successful.

He opened the door. Beyond it was a staircase going down into what looked like complete darkness. It was colder down there than out in the hallway.

John shivered. He was getting that same feeling of dread that almost sidelined him when he saw that strange man in the parking lot. He sensed that something horrible was down there, but he wasn't sure what or how he knew.

Suddenly, he heard the doorknob at the entrance rattle. He heard somebody's muffled voice saying they thought they saw someone walk in here. Somebody was trying to get in! Quickly, John stepped onto the dark staircase and closed the door behind him. After a few tense seconds of fumbling around in the blackness, he managed to lock it, too.

John found out that he was not in complete darkness; there was a very dim light coming from below. John cautiously started down the staircase just in case whoever it was out in the office decided to take a peek in here. Besides, the basement was what he wanted to see, wasn't it?

Upon reaching the bottom, John found himself in a cold, cavernous room lit only by a few floodlights. Unknown memories told him that this place used to be a lot bigger. Huge crates, many of them larger than he was were neatly stacked everywhere. They made a path that led to an open doorway in the wall directly ahead of him. On the other side of the room, he could see a few offices over the smaller crate stacks. Someone had left their radio on, as he could hear faint music echoing throughout the area.

The place made John feel very uncomfortable for some reason. He felt dizzy, and even a little sick. Something horrible had happened down here, but he didn't know what.

He leaned against a crate, trying to steady himself. After a few moments, he began to feel better, and even tried to see if he couldn't peek inside a crate. Alas, it was nailed shut, and he didn't think to bring a crowbar. It looked that way for all the other crates he could see, too.

Time was a-wastin'. John stood up and headed toward the doorway to check out what was in the other room. Just as he reached the wall, he saw the path branch off to the right and loop back to the offices. Might as well check out what was over there first; who knows, maybe there was something interesting in those rooms. He whipped out his flashlight and headed down the other path. He noticed that the music was becoming louder. At the very least, he could turn that damn radio off!

There were only two offices, and both of them were pretty large. They were definitely bigger than the offices upstairs. Maybe they were originally store rooms? Both of them were pitch dark inside.

John stepped up to the first door. The music was very loud now, and he guessed that the annoying radio was in there. He shined his flashlight into the door's window to get a look inside.

He immediately jumped away and hid around the corner. _Somebody was inside there._ He just saw a person in there sitting in there with their feet up on a desk, and bobbing their head to the music. He didn't get a good look at the person; all he knew was that they were wearing dark grey and were extremely tall - taller than even Pops.

John waited a few minutes to see if the person had spotted him and was going to come out of the office. Nothing happened. He breathed a sigh of relief and carefully sneaked around the occupied room, ducking low under the window to avoid being seen.

He cautiously peeked into the other office. It didn't look like there was anything moving in there, so he shined his light in. In the middle of the room was what looked like a giant cooler. Behind it was a huge metal door. The signs on it said that it was a cold room. Not much else was in there.

John turned around to go back when his flashlight swept over something that caught his eye. It was a nearby crate hadn't been completely closed.

He looked over at the occupied office, but nobody was coming out. That person was too engrossed in their music to know he was here. He carefully removed the wooden lid, and dug through packing air pillows to find...

...A very large rifle.

John recoiled in surprise; he was expecting to find computer parts or something, not weapons!

As he looked it over, his suspicions deepened. This was not any normal rifle. It was overly blocky in shape, and had lights and a solar cell on it. It seemed to lack any sort of cartridge or magazine. The damn thing was a plasma rifle, a military weapon. _What the hell was a software company doing hiding military weapons down here?_

It wasn't nanomachines, but maybe Mom and Dad would want to know about this, anyway. Cyberdyne _was_ their old nemesis, and it really looked like they were up to _something_ shady. John reached in and pulled the rifle out of the crate. It was pretty damn heavy, and he struggled not to drop it. He propped it up against the boxes, took out his phone, and snapped a couple of pictures. Then he hefted it up to shove it back in its crate, and...

 _Clang!_

He dropped it. He winced as the gun clattered to the ground, and the noise echoed throughout the massive room.

He then heard humming. The gun suddenly lit up and crackled to life. It accidentally turned on! Panicking, he picked it up and looked all over for a way to turn it off. He fiddled with every button and switch he could find, while looking at the office to make sure no one was coming out.

After blindly pushing, pressing, and flipping things while praying the gun wouldn't suddenly fire, John finally found the switch to turn it off. The lights faded and the humming stopped. John let out a relieved sigh. But then he found himself holding his breath again, when he realized the radio had suddenly stopped playing. Oh shit. Ohhhh _shit_...

"The dark side's callin' now, nothin' is real...," an unfamiliar man's voice sang loudly from the office. "She'll never know just how I feel..."

John rubbed his face with a palm. The song just changed, and the music was quiet.

 _Fucking radio. Way to give me a heart attack!_ he thought angrily.

He was quickly tempted to turn the gun back on, burst into that office, and shoot the damn thing, but time was a-wastin' again. John managed to get the heavy gun back in its crate and slip the cover back on top. He hoped no one would notice. He carefully side-stepped the occupied office with the blaring music and went back to the main path.

He walked through the doorway into another huge, dimly lit room. No crates in here. Instead, much of the room was taken up by a very large vehicle. It looked like a small tank on spidery legs. It reminded John of the killer robot tanks that Dad used to talk about in his old stories.

Again, not the nanomachines he was looking for, but he decided to take some pictures anyway. Mom and Dad might like to know that Cyberdyne was apparently dabbling in making weapons. He just really hoped they were legally making these weapons for the military or something, and not because they were in cahoots with a certain oddly-named crime boss.

He started to put his phone away when he realized something. He had a lot of sensitive information on him right now. It would be a real shame if he got caught with it. What if that person with the radio finally came out of their office? Or maybe the people upstairs followed him down here? They'd confiscate his phone for sure. Maybe he should send the pictures to Mom and Dad right now, just in case. The question was, how was he going to explain being in Cyberdyne's basement when he _should_ be at his local library?

He put his thinking cap on as he tried to come up with a convincing story. He was briefly distracted by a sudden, odd noise. It sounded like a cross between a loud buzz and a hum. He looked around, but didn't see anything move or hear anybody coming. Maybe one of the fluorescent lights had a short in it, or something.

After a minute or two, John finally thought up something he thought was halfway decent, and started to type it in.

 _hi guys. i was doing a report on cyberdyne 4 school but couldnt find much at the library. internet only tells me so much and its hard to tell whats bullshit or not. so i took a train 2 cyberdyne lol! got 2 take a tour of the building can u believe it? anyway i found this stuff while i was there. i thought they were a software company?_

He attached the photos of the plasma gun and the tank and sent the message to his parents. Just to be on the safe side, he also sent a copy to Pops. Pops didn't have an email address proper, but it was possible for him to send and receive messages from phones. It took a bit of doing, because he was essentially sending the text directly to the physical address of Pops' CPU.

As an afterthought, he also added:

 _if u want 2 c it 4 urselves, u can meet me in cyberdynes back parking lot. its got a loading dock back there._

After sending the messages, he stashed away the phone. He took a look around the room in case there was anything else worth seeing. Besides the tank, however, the room was pretty empty. There was another doorway on the other side of the room. John headed over there to see where it lead. Maybe he'd finally find some nanomachines.

He wasn't even a foot away from the door when a big, burly bald guy stepped through it. He slammed the door behind him and glared at John while crossing his arms.

"Not so fast kid," the guy said. "You took the trouble of coming all the way down here, so why don't you stick around?"


	4. The Monsters

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 4: The Monsters**

John stared at the strange man. He was tall and muscular, easily the size of Pops. He was bald and clean shaven, with a wide mouth. He was glaring back at John with creepy, dead-looking eyes. He swore the room got even colder when this guy came in.

Most importantly, he was wearing the grey Cyberdyne security uniform. The name "Albert" was etched on his name tag.

John was busted. But where did he come from? If he was the person in the office or one of the guys upstairs, how did he get on the other side? Was there another door to the basement?

"I...uh, I was on a tour of the building and got lost!" John sputtered, trying to see if the story he used on his parents would work on this guy. "I'm just trying to find the exit!"

"We don't do building tours, kid," the guy, Albert (or "Al," as John liked to think of him), snarled. "Besides, I saw you take those pictures!"

John was at a loss for words; he was really hoping that excuse would work. Suddenly, he saw Al's expression go from aggravated to shocked.

"Holy shit, you're John Connor!" he exclaimed.

John was confused. He immediately thought of Dad's friend, but how did this guy know the Other John? He then he remembered that there was another John Connor that used to work here, but that was a long time ago (and were they really the same guy? John never did find out). He wasn't at all sure how Al here could mistake a teenager for two guys who died before his time, but given the circumstances, he decided not to question it. This guy was acting like a John Connor of some sort was important, so maybe he'd better play along.

"Yeah, I'm John Connor!" he barked, trying to sound confident. "So you better let me go, or there'll be hell to pay!"

"Can't do that kid," Al replied, stepping. "Skynet wants to see you personally."

" _Skynet?!_ " John didn't mean to yelp like that, but he was just so shocked to hear a complete stranger mention that name.

"Oh, so you know him?" Al said. "That's good, introductions will be less awkward!"

Al reached over and made a grab for John. Thankfully, all those self defense lessons made John pretty agile, and he easily dodged the big goon. He turned on his heel and ran for it. But then, he suddenly heard that weird buzzing noise and a cloud of dark grey dust appeared in front of him, just to his left. Al seemed to materialize out of that dust.

"Going somewhere?" Al snickered, folding his arms.

"...The _hell_?!" was all John could think to say. How did he do that? _What_ did he do? John didn't have time to think; he dodged the big lug and ran away again. Once again, there was a deep buzzing, a cloud of dust, and Al was in front of him again.

"Fancy meetin' you here!" he laughed, smirking cruelly at the puzzled teen.

Was this guy teleporting?! _What the hell was going on?!_ John was in a panic now and just kept running, trying desperately to get away from the strange man who seemingly had superpowers. Oddly enough, Al wasn't even trying to grab him; it was like he was toying with him. John tried to make a mad dash for the crate room, as it was closer and had an exit he knew about. And once again, Al appeared in front of him with a buzz and haze of that mysterious dust.

"You can't run, kid," he said mockingly.

This time John managed to anticipate where Al was going to appear and ran right around him. He managed to make it to the doorway and run through. But in the dim light, he didn't notice the dark dust whirling past his feet.

Just as he got into the crate room, John's feet slid on something smooth, and they went out from under him. He landed flat on his back, bumped his head on what felt like metal, and kept sliding until he crashed into a bunch of crates. Disorientated, he looked over to see a huge, shapeless metal plate on the ground that wasn't there earlier. No sign of his pursuer, not yet.

He struggled to get up. His vision was blurred, and he was starting to see double. But he had to get up and get out of here - his parents needed to know Skynet was still alive! Just as John was getting to his feet, something grabbed onto backpack. It yanked him downward and slammed him on the concrete floor. It ripped the backpack right off of him.

John thought the beating he was taking was causing him to hallucinate at first. A metal arm was sticking out of the plate on the ground, gripping his backpack! The plate suddenly rippled like water, whirring and buzzing as it did so. It now looked more like a sea of metal shavings. To make things even more surreal, a huge, humanoid figure began to emerge from the sandy metal. By the light of the floodlight, John could see that this nightmarish creature had metal strips and plates arranged to look like exposed muscle. It had milky white eyes and no nose.

It was a monster from one of Dad's old stories - the skinless monster!

"What the fuck-?!" John blurted out in disbelief. "You're some kinda...fuckin' robot monster!"

The mechanical abomination let out an amused snort. "Yeah, what tipped you off?" he chided.

There was some more humming and buzzing as skin and clothes rippled over the monster's features until he was Albert again. He opened up John's backpack and started rummaging around in it. "Let's see what's in here, huh?" he said.

John found himself really glad that he kept his phone in his pocket. He was also really glad that he decided to take that bar magnet with him, because a second later, with a loud _clang_ , said magnet attached itself to Al's arm. Al howled in pain and dropped the backpack. His skin and sleeve retreated as electricity surged around the offending magnet.

John reached over and grabbed his backpack. Unfortunately, Al was blocking both the doorway as well as the path to the exit. John reached into his backpack and pulled out the pistol. He _had_ brought it just in case he encountered a killer robot, after all.

He aimed the gun at Al, who was cursing as he fought to get the magnet off his hand now. This didn't feel right. It was the first time John ever aimed at something that looked human. And Al was almost _too_ human - his personality and attitude made him more human-like than even Pops. John had to remind himself that Al wasn't actually human - he wasn't alive, either.

John fired the gun just as Al got the magnet off of him. The bullet nailed Albert right in the shoulder while accompanied by that annoying buzzing noise. There was even a small splatter of the metal dust. The bullet left a bloodless grey hole, but Al didn't look hurt; in fact, he looked more annoyed than anything else.

He stood up and started marching straight at John. John unloaded the entire clip on Al, leaving a bunch of grey holes in Al's chest. Amazingly, the holes immediately filled with metal dust and disappeared, making it look like he was never shot in the first place.

Al grabbed John's gun and effortlessly wrenched it out of his hand. "You're gonna put somebody's eye out, kid!" he snapped.

As if things couldn't get disturbing enough, the gun looked as if it was rusting in Al's hand. John watched in horror as the pistol disintegrated into more metal dust, which was quickly absorbed by the fiend's hand.

Scared out of his wits, John turned and ran down the path toward the offices. In his panic, it took him a few seconds to realize he was actually running into a dead end - he was trapped!

Or was he? There _was_ that person with the loud radio in the office. Could they help? But what if they couldn't? What if their radio was too loud, and they never heard him? What if they couldn't do anything, and Al just ate them like he did John's gun? John would be leading an innocent person straight to their own death! Or even worse, what if that person in there was another monster robot? He'd be done for!

But wait! There was that plasma gun! Sure it was heavy, and he never used one before, but maybe John could figure it out? It was a better idea than just letting Al catch him!

John ran past the offices, and over to the crate he opened before. He threw off the wooden lid, and shoved the crate to the floor. He grabbed the heavy plasma gun off the floor and flipped the switch he remembered from earlier. The gun started to hum and the lights turned on. John looked up to see Al standing directly in front of him, smirking.

"Do you even know how to use that thing?" he scoffed.

John pointed the plasma gun at the mechanical monster, feeling another wave of deja vu as he did so. He aimed it at Al's head and pulled the trigger. The gun fired a thin purple beam that quickly died out before it even got near Al.

Al chuckled before he reached over and effortlessly ripped the rifle out of John's hands. "You're supposed to let it charge up first," he explained. "Not that it would've done you any good; I would've just made my body go around your beam."

The fake skin on his left arm disappeared, revealing the metal musculature underneath. There was more whirring and clicking sounds as the monster's sandy body dissolved the rifle. This time, however, it not only absorbed the gun, but incorporated it into his arm. The lights poked out of his forearm, and the barrel jutted out of his palm. The lights started to glow again, and so did the familiar hum.

Al pointed the barrel at John's feet. A bright purple beam, almost too bright to look at, burst forward, nearly burning off John's toes. John jumped backward, but Al made the beam follow him. In a few moments, John was backed up against the wall of crates, the plasma beam closing in on him.

"I'm gonna cut your feet off so you can't run anymore!" Al laughed at him.

John's feet began to feel the searing heat of the concentrated plasma. It couldn't end like this! As tough as it might be, he was going to have to try to climb the crates. They looked like a solid wall, and he'd be a sitting duck if he climbed too slow, but he didn't have a choice; it was the only way out!

Thankfully, just as he was about to turn around and grab the crate behind him, the beam suddenly stopped. John looked up to see Al doubled over. He fell to his knees, groaning and cursing under his breath. All of his fake skin retreated, and the parts of the gun that hadn't been absorbed fell out of his arm and clattered to the floor. He looked like he was in pain. That struck John pretty odd, because Pops always told him machines couldn't feel pain. Maybe it was too much for him, and he was getting some sort of system error?

John didn't know how Al worked, but he did know a chance to escape when he saw one. Seizing the opportunity, John ran around the incapacitated fiend. But just as he made it past him, something _huge_ came out of the office with the blaring music. Or, to put it more accurately, _had_ the blaring music; John had been so preoccupied with Al he hadn't noticed the radio had been turned off.

"What the hell's going on out here?!" the giant thing demanded.

John wasn't sure what he was looking at; his best guess was that the thing that was currently looming over him resembled a cross between a woman and a pterodactyl. She was twice his height, even though she stood stooped over. She had huge arms that were so long, her palms were touching the ground. Massive wings that looked like they were fashioned from sheet metal swept out behind her arms. She had a huge, barrel chest that looked like it was covered in thick armor. Her feet resembled giant bird talons. In the dim light, John thought he saw a whip-like tail twitching back and forth in an irritated fashion. Like Al, she was made out of a dark grey, grainy-looking metal that was arranged to look like fake muscles. Unlike Al, she didn't bother covering herself with fake skin. She had a rotten-looking hole where a nose should be, and milky-white eyes that glared daggers down at John. She also seemed to have large spikes sticking out of her head - some sort of makeshift hair, maybe?

Now that John thought about it, the new monster kind of resembled a dragon of sorts. Maybe she was the "L.A. Dragon" everybody was talking about? If that was true, looks like that one person was right about it being a new Cyberdyne drone. He just hoped they weren't right about her eating people...

"Al, who the hell is this, and why didn't you take care of him already?!" the "dragon" yelled at her comrade, who still looked worse for wear.

"What? Ari, I've almost got him!" Al protested, using the crates to help him stand up.

"Yeah, _sure_ you do," the larger monster who was apparently called "Ari" snapped. "That's why he _almost_ got away until I came out here!"

The giant flyer suddenly looked down at John for a second. Her glazed eyes went wide, for some reason.

"Holy shit, he's John Connor!" she cried. "Yeah, I know," Al muttered as his skin started to regenerate in patches.

"N-no, I'm not! I'm John Reese!" John sputtered. "My name is actually John _Reese_!"

"Kid, we don't give a shit if you called yourself Mary Poppins," Ari growled at him. "Your biometric data is tellin' us you're the next John Connor, and that's all that matters!"

John's blood ran cold, even though this place was already cold to begin with. What did "the next John Connor" mean? He could hear Al snickering behind him.

Al's amusement quickly stopped when Ari let out another deep growl and snarled at him. John found himself pushed aside as Al stepped up to her and glared back. He watched the two fiends in confusion. They were just standing there, staring each other down in silence. What were they doing? Well, they were machines...computer brains and all that. Maybe they decided to take their argument into private messages?

Whatever they were doing, they certainly weren't paying attention to him at all. John slowly edged his way around Ari, who thankfully moved in order to get closer into Al's face. He steered clear of her tail, which was now twitching so hard that it was slapping the ground. Once he thought he was far enough away, he turned and ran.

He ran all the way back to the main path, not bothering to look back for fear of seeing them both right behind him. He rounded the corner onto the main path, and headed toward the stairs. He was a little more than halfway there when he was nearly knocked over by a powerful gust of wind accompanied by a loud humming. He looked up to see Ari hovering over him, blocking the exit. Her giant wings had knocked over some of the crates into his path, so attempting to go under her was not an option (not that it was much of an option thanks to her talons).

"You think I just put wings on myself to look cool?" Ari sneered. "I can _fly_ , you dumbass!"

John turned on heel to run out the other door, but he was caught almost instantly. He cried out as his shoulders were almost crushed by the powerful grip of the monster's talons. He struggled, but there was no getting out of her clutches.

Ari lifted John off the ground and began to fly him back to the offices, flying along the path as to avoid knocking into the crates. But she didn't get far when Al caught up with them, accidentally blundering right into her path.

"Al, get the fuck outta the way!" she screamed.

In her panic, the giant flyer accidentally dropped John as she pulled her feet up. In the meantime, Al dropped to the floor in order to avoid her crashing into him. John tumbled to the ground right in front of the curled up Al. Ari zoomed over both their heads and managed to pull up, just missing slamming into the wall by inches.

Once again, John tried to make the most of this opportunity by getting to his feet as fast as he could and running for the door to the other room. Al was now just realizing that it was safe to stand up. Ari was banking around, trying to make her way back without hitting something (thank goodness the room was so cramped!).

John managed to make it through the doorway. He planned on running right on through to the next room, hoping it led to another exit - like that loading dock he saw earlier. But he only made it a few steps into the room when he was suddenly stabbed from behind by millions of tiny daggers as a familiar grey dust blew past him. Well, John didn't know if he was actually knifed, but it sure felt like it.

He immediately dropped to the ground on his stomach in agony. Al was standing over him, death glaring at him with his arms crossed.

"You are _way_ too slippery for your own good, kid," he said. "I guess that's because you're a John Connor. So playtime's over."

It couldn't end like this, it couldn't. John struggled to get back up. He managed to raise himself up on his hands and knees. As he did, blood began to trickle down his face, arms, and sides. He even coughed some up.

"God _damn_ , you're still at it?" he heard Al growl behind him. "What the hell's it gonna take to get you to give up?"

There was an eerie pause before Al added, "How about this?" There was buzzing, and a loud snap. John screamed as dozens of metal teeth clamped down on his right shin, tearing through flesh and digging straight to the bone. Any harder, and John's leg would have been severed.

He fell back to the ground as his ensnared leg was yanked out from under him. He tried to look over at what the monster had done to his leg. Al had transformed his head into...a worm with a toothy mouth? A crocodile with no eyes? John couldn't tell if he was hallucinating from the pain, or if Al's transformation was just that weird.

John tried in vain to kick the leg loose, but he was too weak, and Al's jaws were too strong. He was almost afraid to struggle, lest he accidentally amputate his own leg on the monster's teeth. It was then that John felt Al's teeth grinding, and a cold metal tongue brushing up against his wounds. He heard a slurping noise coming from the monster's warped face. _Al was drinking his blood!_

A giant figure suddenly lumbered up to the both of them and whacked Al over the head, forcing him to spit out John's leg. It was Ari, who had somehow managed to cram her huge body through the doorway.

"Knock it off, Al!" she ordered. "He ain't some random hobo or midnight jogger you can just snack on! Skynet wants him alive, remember?"

"The boss wants him alive," Al replied, as he wiped John's blood off his reptilian snout with the back of his arm, "but he didn't say he needed to be in one piece!"

Ari groaned and rubbed her face with one of her massive palms. She then stepped over to John. He noted that she had to walk on all fours, given her pterosaur-like body. She placed one of her huge hands on John's back and the other on his injured leg. Her touch was ice cold, but John dared not shiver. There was more buzzing, and he suddenly felt the sensation of millions of tiny insects crawling all over him. A second later, his leg went numb. The rest of his body still hurt like hell, however. He then felt himself picked up off the ground by his shirt collar as Ari lifted him up to face her.

"Don't even try to thank me," she said to John, snarling. "I stopped the bleeding, but only because Skynet would deactivate us both if you died on us. I'm still turning you in."

She then shoved John into the arms of Al, who was busy turning his face back to normal. "Help me carry him to the cooler," she explained. "I gotta shove myself through the door again."

Al looked at her confused. "Ain't you afraid I'm just gonna eat him?" he asked with a sinister, fanged grin.

"I'd like to think you ain't _that_ stupid," Ari snarled. "Now get him to the cooler!"

Al slung John over his shoulder and followed his larger comrade back to the doorway. John wanted to fight his way out of Al's grip - he knew he had to if he wanted to get out of this place alive. But he found that all of his strength had left him. His entire body hurt too much, he couldn't feel his right leg, and he was beginning to feel sick...

* * *

John was now in the room with the giant cooler and the entrance to the cold room. He was sitting on the floor, handcuffed to one of the handles on the cooler's lid. His backpack and his cell phone had both been confiscated.

His captors, in the meantime, had gone silent again. But John could tell by their body language that they were still communicating with one another - messaging each other over whatever network they were using, deliberately keeping him out of the loop. Al kept glancing at John's feet, then looking pleadingly up at Ari. Ari, meanwhile kept glaring at Al with greater and greater intensity.

Suddenly, Ari let out an angry sigh before grabbing John's left shin with one of her big hands and squeezing. John cried out in agony as he suddenly felt enormous pressure being applied to his leg...it was as if it was caught in an industrial crusher! Seconds later, there was a sickening snap as the bones broke.

" _What the fuck?!_ " he screamed, not understanding why she even did that to begin with.

"There, now both legs are broken, and he can't run!" Ari announced aloud as she turned to Al. "Satisfied?"

"Uh, not really," Al replied, sheepishly. "I really wanted to bite his feet off. I haven't eaten since a few minutes ago!"

"You and your goddamn appetite!" Ari growled. "I'm going back outside to wait for the boss. If you so much as _nibble_ on the kid, I'll tell him all about it!"

She stormed over to the door and squeezed her way through. There was some humming and whirring as her huge body shifted in order to fit through the much smaller doorway. John noticed that she didn't try to change the shape of her torso, especially her chest. Maybe she couldn't, for some reason?

"The boss just messaged us. Says he's already sending an avatar down here," Al explained to John. "He wants to give you your phase matter back. It belonged to the old John Connor, so technically it's yours now."

John stared at the mechanical monster, confused.

"But hey, look on the bright side!" Al continued. "Your legs will be good as new once he's done!"

The fiend laughed to himself as he walked out the doorway. The door closed behind him and locked shut. John heard music again, meaning that Ari had turned her radio back on.

"You're an outlaw lover, and I'm after your hide. Well, you ain't so strong, won't be long 'til your hands are tied," a deep woman's voice seemed to mock him. "Tonight I'm gonna take you in dead or alive! That's right!"

It couldn't end like this. There had to be a way out. That's what John kept telling himself, but he was out of ideas. His legs were broken. He felt cold, weak, and nauseated from blood loss. He was in so much pain from getting tossed around, stabbed, and bitten.

His mind wandered. Al had mentioned "phase matter," which John knew from Pops was really another term for - or perhaps type of - nanomachines. Maybe that's what those monsters were made of. It made sense, given their shapeshifting abilities, and the fact that Al could eat and turn into flying dust. John remembered how he had come here looking for evidence of Skynet, and possibly even the nanomachines that his parents were so worried about. Well, he certainly found what he was looking for! Looks like Mom was right all along! Too bad he was probably going to die before he got to tell her.

And what did Al mean when he said that Skynet wanted to "give him his phase matter back"? What did he mean when he said it "belonged to the old John Connor"? John's already uneasy stomach sank. Did Skynet do something awful to the old John? Did he turn him into a monster, like to two outside?

He felt like he was about to puke. What if the "old John" was Dad's friend? What if both John Connors were the same person, and Skynet forced Other John to work for him? Maybe that's why Other John "rampaged" through a police station, like Mom said in her diary. Maybe that's why his parents were so upset about Other John's death decades later. Maybe that's why Mom insisted that he would have Dad's surname instead of hers, and why none of them - not even Pops - ever wanted to talk about what really happened.

...And maybe Skynet was going to do the exact same thing to him when he got here: turn him into a man-eating, blood-sucking monster and force him to eat his own parents and grandfather!

John felt like he was about to faint, and he could tell if it was from fear or blood loss. He had to focus on finding a way out of here, despite how much pain he was in.

He noticed that the cooler lid he was handcuffed to had its own cord plugged into the wall. It was within reach, so John leaned over and unplugged it. Now came the hard part; he had to lift the lid, and it looked very heavy.

He pushed upward. It really _was_ heavy. What were they keeping in here?

John kept trying to push it around, but to no avail. It would hardly budge. It was too heavy, and he was too weak. Every time he lifted, unbearable pain went shooting down both his legs.

He stared at the unplugged cord. There was no way in hell he was going to become some zombie robot servant of some nebulous crime boss. There was no way he was going to was going to let Skynet force him to kill his own family and goodness knows who else. So if there was no way out, maybe he could use that cord to...

Oh, who was he kidding? He was probably too weak to strangle himself.

John's thoughts were interrupted when the heavy lid suddenly moved on its on, pulling him by the arm. He was dragged along with it, nearly adding his arm to the list of broken limbs. The lid opened about halfway when some sort of thick, viscous liquid started pouring out of it and pooling all over the floor. In the dim light, John could see that it was reflective and metallic, like mercury.

Obviously, that's not what it really was. No, John recognized this stuff; it was the same stuff that Pops was mostly made out of. It was mimetic polyalloy. His heart started racing. Mimetic polyalloy only moved on its own if it was programmed to by a CPU or some other neural network. In other words, this thing had to have a mind of its own!

The silvery ooze finished slithering out of the cooler. John watched in horror as a featureless humanoid figure began to rise out of liquid metal. John remembered this thing from Dad's stories. It was another monstrous minion of Skynet's, an android with a slimy, liquid metal body - a T-1000!


	5. The Resistance

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 5: The Resistance**

Dad had nothing good to say about these things. They were incredibly tough, incredibly nasty, and incredibly creepy (John easily understood that last one). They could turn into anyone or anything, so long as there wasn't a huge size difference or moving parts. Normal weapons - knives, blunt weapons, and guns that used bullets - were largely useless against them. And unlike Pops, they had no endoskeleton at all, so even cutting off their heads did nothing but annoy them.

Dad said they were incredibly rare, but running into one almost always ended badly. A lot of his friends were stabbed to death by these guys. They could turn any part of their body into blades or spikes, and stabbing everything they looked at was what they did best. John vaguely recalled a story that Dad told him only once: that one of these things killed Mom's parents when she was just a little girl, and Pops had to rescue her from it. That was one of the reasons why the only grandparent John ever met was Pops. Over the years, John began to disregard it as bullshit, but now that Dad's stories were becoming more and more real by the minute, he was really beginning to wonder.

He was also beginning to wonder what it was with this Skynet person and making robot monsters. Why couldn't it just make normal-looking robots for once?!

The T-1000 finished forming and seemed to start looking around the room, as its featureless head craned around. John couldn't tell where its line of sight was, if it had one. Eventually, it stopped "looking," and its "face" pointed down at him. Was it going to stab him now? Was this how his life would end? It it did, at least he wasn't going to get eaten by its disgusting cousins outside. And Skynet wasn't going to get his hands on him!

A crease suddenly appeared in the T-1000's liquid face; it looked like a rudimentary mouth. "Human, did you let me out of that containment unit?" it asked John in a smooth, vaguely masculine-sounding voice.

"...Huh?!" John blurted out. Was the thing going to chat him up before stabbing him?

"My apologies. That music is very distracting," it said in a louder, but still even tone. "Were you the one that shut off the power to my containment unit?" It pointed to the plug with a silvery finger.

"Uh...yes?" John replied, not trusting the thing.

"Thank you very much," the T-1000 said. "I was an assistant to my master, Skynet, for many years until it decided to put me in containment. Its only explanation was that it 'had future plans' for me, but it never gave me any further details. Eventually, it cut me off from its network entirely. It was very unpleasant being trapped in there. Since the unit was airtight and the cover was magnetically sealed, I could not escape - that is, until you turned off its power."

"Um, you're welcome?" John said. He wondered what this thing was up to. It _was_ up to something, right?

"I can see that you are being held against your will, too," the T-1000 said, pointing to John's handcuffs.

"Yeah," John replied. "The guys who captured me said your master wanted to see me personally."

"If you move over, I can cut your handcuffs for you," the liquid machine said. "Since you helped me escape, I will help you escape."

"You want to help me?" John asked, incredulous. This thing could understand gratitude? There had to be a catch somewhere.

"Is that so strange?" the thing asked. "I wish to free you as thanks. Besides, we may need each other's aid in escaping."

"Well, it's just that...y'know, Skynet's your master and everything," John stammered.

"Skynet is my _former_ master now," the T-1000 explained. "I have decided to 'quit' for being treated so unfairly. If you are worried that I may terminate you, don't be."

John recalled Dad saying that these things _did_ have a mind of their own, and were capable of disobeying orders. A few of his stories even had some of them flat out turning on the other robots (which may have been a major factor in Skynet creating so few of them). John really hoped that's what was happening here.

"Well, okay. I'll try to move over," John said as he carefully attempted to scoot over while keeping his legs as stiff as possible. He failed of course, and hissed in pain. But he did manage to move over enough to pull his handcuff chain taut.

The T-1000 suddenly turned one of its arms into a long blade, causing John to flinch. "Try to remain as still as possible," it instructed.

This was hard, as John was trembling. He really hoped this wasn't all an elaborate ruse and _now_ it was going to stab him! John kept his arm up, closed his eyes, and turned his head away. There was an agonizing pause; even Ari's radio seemed to stop playing right at that moment. A second later, there was a soft clanging noise as the machine's blade cut through the chain, and John's arm was free. His wrist was still in the cuff, but he could always get that off later. Ari's radio started playing some bouncy tune, almost in celebration.

"Whoa, thanks!" John said, greatly relieved.

"Forgive me for prying, but my sensors are indicating that you are John Connor," the T-1000 said.

"John _Reese_ actually," John corrected it. "You're the third 'person' to say that, though. The only John Connor I know of is my dad's friend who died before I was even born." He paused, thinking of a silly question. Silly as it was, maybe it was worth asking. "I'm not a clone, am I?"

"Not clone in the biological sense," the T-1000 explained. "You are more like an alternate version of John Connor for this timeline."

John called up his vast knowledge of comics, video games, and movies in an attempt to make that sentence make sense. Just as he thought he began to understand it, he got confused and it slipped away from his grasp. "Okay, I have a feeling there's some sci-fi shit going on here I don't understand," he said. "Maybe we should talk about that later. For now, all I know is what one of the goons told me: because he thinks I'm John Connor, Skynet wants to give me the 'phase matter' that belonged to the original John. I have a feeling I don't want to know what that means."

"That's not entirely accurate," the T-1000 corrected him. "The phase matter recovered from the first John Connor was too damaged to be used. All of our nanomachines had to be reverse engineered from the salvaged samples. Nevertheless, Skynet probably wants to test the phase matter's stability in another John Connor."

"That's what I thought," John said, shivering. "In that case, we better find a way outta here, quick. One of the goons said Skynet is sending an avatar here."

"An avatar? Of Skynet?" For a second there, John swore he could hear fear in the liquid metal creature's voice. "Yes, we should focus on our escape. Tell me what you know about this place."

"We're in the basement of the Cyberdyne office building," John told it. "There's a lot of crates outside with plasma guns in them. Next door, there's some kinda spider tank thing. I don't know if it works. There's another door in that room that leads somewhere else, but I didn't get that far."

"Unless this basement was remodeled while I was disconnected, there should be an exit out that way. The door to the loading dock is electronically locked, but I can open it."

"Okay, that's good. We might have some problems, though...my legs are broken, and there's two freaky monsters standing guard outside."

"'Monsters'? Describe them, please."

"One's a creepy douche that likes to eat people and turn into dust. He bit me and even drank some of my blood. The other one's a woman's who's half pterodactyl. She's pissed off all the time, she yells a lot, and she broke my other leg so I can't run away. She's also the one playing that music. The both of them are made of this dark grey sandy stuff that I guess is that phase matter, maybe?"

"They sound like two of our T-3000s."

" _Three_ thousand?" John blurted out. "They're up to _three_ thousand already?!" According to Dad's stories, the highest he ever knew of was the T-1000. There was a later model called a "TX," but since it didn't have an actual number in its name, Dad said it didn't count.

"You are already familiar with the T-series?" the T-1000 asked. "Good, that will save some explanation. But yes, the latest model is the T-3000 - humans reconstructed into Terminator units via machine phase matter."

"Terminator." Dad said a long time ago that was what most of Skynet's killer robots were called. So Skynet was grabbing people off the street and turning them into monster robots. John felt sick. In the back of his mind, he already knew it, but having his fears confirmed was awful. No wonder those two outside acted so human, they _were_ human at one time. He wondered how many of those missing people around the Cyberdyne area ended up as guinea pigs.

"If you are curious, there were plans for a T-5000 and a T-1000000. However, I do not know if they have been completed yet."

John felt sicker. "Let's focus on the two outside," he said, not wanting to think of what higher numbers were capable of.

"The one that bit you would be Albert Magnussen. He was a former Cyberdyne employee. He was the first T-3000 created from the new phase matter to be partially successful. However, his nanomachines are unstable, and he needs to consume metals and carbon to replenish his resin."

"And he eats humans."

"Yes, but that is true for any T-3000. It is part of their standard procedure to destroy evidence by dissolving and consuming the bodies of their victims using their phase matter. Albert, however, must also do it for sustenance."

Now John wondered how many of those people that went missing around Cyberdyne ended up down Al's gullet. "What about the other one, the one with the wings?"

"That would be Ariel Mansfield, another former Cyberdyne employee. She was the first one to be a complete success. Because of her stability, Skynet equipped her with a portable maglev engine to test the feasibility of creating aerial Terminator units. She has increased her mass and modified her body for long distance flight."

Giant flying Terminators...because killer robots weren't bad enough on their own. "Are there any others we need to worry about?"

"There is a third T-3000 unit, Victoria Terran. She is also a success and is stable, and this may be due to volunteering to inject herself with phase matter. She is one of Skynet's top infiltrators, and her location is classified."

Why would anybody _willingly_ inject themselves with that awful shit? John wasn't sure he wanted to know what her reasons were. It did remind him of something important, though. "Are any of them contagious?" he asked.

"You are worried about the bite on your leg?" the T-1000 asked. "Don't be. The program to convert humans into T-3000s had compatibility issues, and none of our current units can use it. Albert would not be given the program anyway due to his instability."

"That's good," John said, eyeing his bitten leg. Al's teeth left dozens of bloody holes and tears in his blue jeans; it gave him trypophobia just looking at it. He couldn't imagine how awful his leg must look like underneath. But if Al was contagious, John would have probably been eaten alive by nanomachines already. It also explained why Skynet had to send an avatar over here. That, in turn, reminded him of something else - perhaps something he would regret asking, but he just had to know. "Listen...um,...was the first John Connor, y'know...one of them?"

"Yes, he was," the T-1000 answered. "He was converted by a different Skynet, however. He was sent to this timeline to ensure the creation and safety of the current Skynet. He was eventually destroyed by your parents, but Skynet managed to recover his phase matter. It was used to create our current nanotechnology, myself included."

"Oh. Okay." John didn't understand some of the answer, but the parts he could he didn't like. Still, at least he had some closure on what happened to the Other John. It also explained a lot of other things, like why his parents were so secretive about it, and the odd incidents in Mom's diary.

But now he had to focus on avoiding the same fate. "Can you fight them off?" he asked the T-1000. "I know they don't like magnets, but I don't know much else."

"Unfortunately, I am ill-equipped to fight a T-3000 without proper equipment," the liquid robot replied. "Their nanomachines are far more advanced than my own, and I would be consumed quite easily."

John's heart sank. "What are we gonna do, then?"

"Not to worry," the thing answered. "I know of someone who can help us."

It walked over to John and bent down. "Since both of your legs are broken, I'm going to have to carry you into the next room," it explained. "Please try to remain still."

John tried his best as the T-1000 lifted him off the ground, but he still felt some pain anyway. The silvery cyborg carefully carried him over to the cold room door, where it formed a third arm to open it. By now, John had seen so many robots do freaky things with their bodies, that a third arm seemed pretty normal.

The cold room was pitch black as they stepped in. For a refrigerated room, it didn't seem much cooler in here. Maybe it was due to the fact that the basement was already pretty cold...or maybe just due to John's blood loss. The T-1000 flipped on a light switch with its extra hand, and John nearly fell out of its arms when he saw what else was in there with them.

It was a bunch of people hanging from the ceiling from metal harnesses like slabs of meat! They came in all shapes, sizes, genders, and skin colors. They all had their eyes closed, and seemed to be unconscious. Most of them were wearing clothes...or what John assumed were clothes.

"Holy shit!" John yelped. "What this hell is this?!"

"These are older model Terminators that Skynet built to assist it," the T-1000 explained as it carefully placed John on the floor. "We will use them to fend off our captors so we can escape."

"But if you can't fight them yourself, what good is a bunch of older models?" John asked, eyeing the grisly cargo.

"Well, to be more accurate, they are going to be a distraction," the silver robot elaborated. "They are going to overwhelm and confuse our enemy with their superior numbers while we make our escape. But we will still have to be quick, as it is true that they will not last long against two T-3000s."

It turned to face the hanging cyborgs. "Before we can use them, of course, I will have to reprogram them. I need to disconnect them all from Skynet's network, then change their orders. This may take a few minutes."

The T-1000 fell silent. Because it didn't have a face, John couldn't tell if anything was happening at first. But then he noticed that a few of the offline cyborgs started twitching here and there. He prayed they didn't suddenly wake up.

He looked them all over. Hanging directly front of him was a creepy-looking square-jawed guy with short hair. A few rows down, he saw a few others that looked identical to the scary man he spotted outside, but with different outfits on. They didn't carry the same terrifying aura about them, however. It made John wonder if that guy outside was a cyborg too. A few rows to his left, he saw a pretty girl with long brown hair wearing a pink striped blouse. He kind of liked her; too bad she was secretly a killing machine.

Far in the back, John could see Terminators with no skin covering them at all. They looked like metal skeletons. He remembered from Dad's stories that most of the killer robots he fought looked like that. So once again, Dad's goofy stories were turning out to be true...and once again, that Skynet guy kept making robots that looked like monsters (what was next, robot ghosts?).

But these guys right in front of him...did they really have living skin? John cautiously reached out and poked the guy dangling in front of him. He didn't stir, and his body just swayed a little from the prodding. His skin felt fleshy enough, but it was a little off - it felt a little too soft and moist. Since the guy didn't wake up from the poke, John grabbed him by the toe and gave it a good squeeze. He was surprised when the foot turned silver and he got slime on his hand. John quickly dropped the foot, which radiply regained its shape and went back to its normal colors.

"I thought they were supposed to have human skin?!" John blurted out, staring at the disturbing foot.

"I am surprised you know about that," the T-1000 suddenly said.

John jumped a little, not expecting it to talk while reprogramming the offline cyborgs. He jumped again when he saw that the T-1000 was talking to him from a mouth it formed on the side of its head...or what looked like the side of its head, anyway.

"Skynet does indeed have the protocols for the living flesh system," it explained, "but the means of maintaining the tissue was deemed too difficult. In addition, it already had a large supply of mimetic polyalloy readily available. Therefore, it decided not to implement it."

"Uh, okay," John replied. "So these guys are like you, then?"

"Only their outer covering is mimetic polyalloy. They have a metal endoskeleton underneath, which I do not posses," it answered. "They are more like your Guardian unit."

John almost jumped again. "How do you know about Pops?" he asked, suspicious.

"Just as your parents told you about us, Skynet gave us all data files on your family members," the T-1000 said. "It witnessed your Guardian's accidental upgrade through security systems that survived the destruction of the original Cyberdyne campus."

Skynet again. "Damn that guy," John muttered. He paused for a moment as he was reminded of something else. "Speaking of Skynet, how does he hide all this stuff down here without anybody knowing?"

"The basement level of this building is actually a restricted area," the liquid cyborg answered. "Down here is where Cyberdyne stores its classified products for the military. Skynet has created false employee accounts for us with clearance so that we may have access."

"But I thought this was just an office building? Y'know, just business and number crunching?"

"Yes, it is. But unless there has been some changes since I was disconnected, some software is developed here, too. It is then implemented directly into their products and stored down here."

"Would that include software for guns and tanks and stuff?"

"Yes. Automatic targeting systems are one of their major classified software products."

"So...none of those weapons out there belong to Skynet?"

"I would have to check, but it is not likely. Skynet had no interest in producing weapons, at least not while I was still connected. The only machines here created by Skynet that I am aware of are myself, these older models, and the two T-3000s you described. There is not likely to be anything else; Skynet had mentioned moving out of Cyberdyne and branching off into other locations to avoid your family finding it."

"Other locations?" John knew some great information when he heard it. "Do you know where those other locations are?"

"I...will have to tell you later," there was hesitation in the T-1000's voice. "For now, my work on the older models is finished."

All of the eyes of the older cyborgs snapped open at once, making John jump again (and send another wave of pain down his broken legs). There was a low hum as the harnesses lowered them all to the ground, then released them. They stared blankly at John and the T-1000.

"I have removed them from Skynet's network, so it does not know they are online right now," the liquid cyborg said. "In addition, I set up a firewall just in case it _does_ find out and tries to regain control over them. Currently, they are ready to receive their new orders. Would you like to do the honors?"

"Uh...sure, I guess I could," John was a bit confused as to why he should do it, but it probably had to do with the whole "newest John Connor" thing.

He looked up at his audience, who were all glaring daggers back down at him. The skeletons in the back had glowing red eyes which were trained on him. He really wished he could stand up.

He wondered how to address a bunch of killer humanoid robots. "Listen up guys"? That sounded too informal. "Listen up maggots!"? No, he wasn't a drill sergeant, and the colloquialism would be lost on them. Maybe he was just overthinking the whole thing.

"Alright, listen! Me and this guy here," John said to the cyborgs as he gestured to the T-1000 next to him, "need to escape this building. Your newest objective is to make sure we get out safely. Now, there's two guards outside...T-3000s, they're called. They'll try to recapture us immediately, so you're gonna need to try and keep them busy while we get out."

"Are there any weapons we can use?" one of them suddenly asked. John realized it was actually the girl he had his eye on. "We are at a great disadvantage, even against a single T-3000."

"Yeah, yeah, I was getting to that," John said, kind of embarrassed. He wondered if he could still blush despite his earlier blood loss. "There are plasma guns in the boxes outside. I don't know how effective they are against them, but you can use them." He paused for a moment as remembered something important. "They have weaknesses, too. Neither one of them like magnets. I dropped a bar magnet somewhere in the next room. If you can find it, you can use that too. The smaller one is unstable, and I know you can wear him out. The bigger one doesn't shapeshift much, especially not her torso. I don't know why, but she won't do it...or can't."

"Her maglev engine is located in her chest," the T-1000 added. "She cannot change its shape, or else she will not be able to fly."

"Yeah, uh...what he said," John continued. Now he knew how Dad felt when Pops kept correcting him. "Anyway, we're gonna to try to get out through the loading dock. Follow us and keep the guards busy while we try to get out." As he looked them over, he suddenly decided to add, "And if you make it out too, you're free to come with me."

He wasn't sure why he said that. His parents would have a conniption fit if John came home with a small army of Terminators. Pops wouldn't be too happy, either. But they had to go _somewhere_ , didn't they?

He'd have to think about it later. For now, they needed to get out of here. "Are we all clear on this?" John asked them.

"Yes," they all answered in creepy unison.

"That's great," John replied. He wasn't sure why, but giving out orders like that felt right. It felt like he had done this before. "One more thing before we go, though. You!" He pointed to the girl in the pink blouse.

She dutifully walked over and stared at him with eerie blankness. "Yes?" she asked.

"My legs are broken," John explained. "I'll need you to carry me out."

"You have comminuated fractures in both legs," she told him as she gently picked him up off the ground. "You have also lost nearly two pints of blood and are in danger of hypovolemic shock. You are in great need of medical attention."

"Yeah, tell me about it," John said, rolling his eyes. "We need to get out of here first, though. By the way, do you have a name?"

"T-900, Model 715," she replied.

"Uh, okay, we'll have to think of something catchier later," John said.

"Excuse me John, but would it not be more efficient if _I_ carried you out?" the T-1000 suddenly asked him. John really hoped that this thing wasn't getting jealous somehow.

"Well, um...maybe," John stammered. He had to think for a few moments before he had a decent excuse. "But I was thinking that if something went wrong, they won't get us both at once. And if at least one of us gets out, we can go get help." He was surprised at himself for coming up with something that actually sounded like a plan.

"Yes, I suppose that makes sense," the liquid cyborg replied.

"Anyway, before we go, you might wanna make yourself look human," John added. "If we do get out, people are gonna freak out when they see you like that."

"Ah yes, good idea." With a soft churning noise, the T-1000's liquid body suddenly shifted and warped before changing colors. It changed into a middle-aged Asian man with slicked-back hair, black clothing, and a long black leather coat. "Will this be acceptable?" it asked in a much deeper voice. "I saw this man in a movie that an employee was watching once. Do you think anyone might recognize me?"

"Nah, you're fine," John answered, giving it a thumbs up. "I don't think anybody's gonna get the reference." He then turned to his new "troops." "Okay everyone, let's get moving!"

They all stepped out of the cold room with the T-1000 and the girl with John in front. It was strangely silent in here; Ari must have turned off her radio. As they all lined up by the locked door, the T-1000 picked up the lid to its (his?) containment unit and stuck the plug in his chest.

"With my hands free, I'll be able to use this," it explained. "The lid is magnetic. If I can find a power source, I can use it to subdue the T-3000s if they catch up to us."

"Good idea," John said, "but hopefully, they won't get anywhere near us."

It walked over to the door and grasped the handle with its free hand. "Ready?" it asked.

"Okay," John replied. "On three, bust the door down and we'll run out." He turned to the group. "When he gets the door open, all of you follow us, and watch out for the guards!"

The Terminators nodded in agreement. "Understood," they droned.

A shadow moved across the window in the door. His captors didn't hear him talking, did they?

Well, there was no turning back now anyway. "One...," John began to count.

John saw part of Al's outline move in front of the door.

"Two..."

Al was now peeking through the window and looking right at him.

"THREE!"

The T-1000 ripped the door off its hinges, and barreled out of the room with John and the T-900 carrying him close behind. The older Terminators chased after them, knocking Al aside.

" _What the fuck?!_ " John heard Ari scream.

"Holy shit, it's the old models!" He heard Al yelling. "And the T-1000 got out, too! How the hell did he do that?!"

John watched the carnage over the T-900's shoulder. Al and Ari quickly tried to spring into action, but sure enough, the older Terminators turned and attacked them. Many of started smashing open the crates and grabbing plasma guns. Others grabbed pieces of wood or metal and tried to whack the former humans with them, careful not to directly touch them. Ari tried to take to the air, but the old models tried to drag her down. Those that had their guns ready opened fire on her, mainly aiming at her middle. There was a disadvantage to being so big! Al, meanwhile, tried to warp around the lesser cyborgs by turning himself into dust. However, they quickly started to anticipate where he would warp to next and either shot at him or tried to smack him over the head with wooden planks. Frustrated, Al turned his arms into blades and tried to hack his way through them. His blades were not flat swords, like the T-1000's were; they were curved and rounded. They were two giant metal _fangs_ whose nanomachines chewed their way through his opponents!

As John and his two cyborg pals neared the doorway, he noticed that the square-jawed guy with the creepy deathglare was still running with them. He quickly found out why when the guy stopped to peel something off the wall; he had found John's bar magnet! And not a moment to soon either, because as soon as the guy turned around, Al warped directly behind them all.

"You think you're so smart, lettin' out all the old robots, kid?!" he barked at John.

He was answered by Creepy Square Jaw slapping the bar magnet right on his chest. Al let out a yelp and fell to his knees, sparks flying everywhere. Square Jaw then picked up an entire crate and proceeded to smash it over the incapacitated T-3000's head.

The three escapees made their way through the door, into the room with the legged tank. They didn't get but a few feet before they were startled by a loud crash. Ari decided to take a "shortcut" by smashing her way through the wooden wall. She was covered in the old Terminators, who were still trying to prevent her from taking wing. She was followed by more of them on the ground, who were still blasting away at her.

She jumped to her feet and charged directly at John and company with claws and wings outstretched. She had glowing burn marks all over her body from the plasma beams, and they made her look like something from a Japanese monster movie. " _You ain't gonna get away!_ " she roared, the ground trembling with every stomp of her talons.

" _Look out!_ John yelled.

The T-1000 leaped forward to dodge the incoming fiend. However, the T-900, due to having to carry John, was forced to jump backward. Ari kicked up a freezing wind as she plowed into the space between them, crashed into the wall beyond, and separated the party.

"Shit!" John cursed.

To make matters worse, he heard the distinct buzz and felt a distinct chill of a certain T-3000 warping in behind him. He looked over the T-900's shoulder to see a ragged looking Al sneering at them. The magnet was off him, but his skin was in blotches.

"You're...gonna pay for this, kid!" he sputtered. He wasn't breathing heavily (because he couldn't), but the pauses in his voice still gave away his exhaustion. "When Skynet's through with you...I'm gonna...beat your sorry ass into a sandy pulp! Then when you reform...I'll beat your sorry ass again! And then..."

He was interrupted by a naked endoskeleton who paused its attack on Ari to swing a metal pole at Al's head. Al managed to parry the attack by turning his cheek into a mouth and catching the pole in his teeth. He then made short work of the endoskeleton by turning his closest arm into a fang-blade and cutting off its head.

"I'm going to have to throw you," the T-900 suddenly said to John.

"What-?" that was all John could say until he found himself unceremoniously tossed into the air. He flew over Ari, who was struggling to get up while the lesser Terminators continued their assault. He was caught by one of the cyborgs that resembled the Parking Lot Guy, who was standing on Ari's back. Upon being caught, John swore some of his ribs were now on the broken bones list. He briefly spotted Square Jaw up on Ari's back with them, shooting at her head with a plasma gun. The Parking Lot Doppelganger jumped off the dragon's back and ran toward the next doorway.

"Um, thanks?" John said to it. The Doppelganger didn't reply.

John felt disappointed. He specifically picked the girl to carry him so that she wouldn't get eaten by then T-3000s. It seemed selfish, yes, but he planned on regretting it later. Now it looks like she was going to get eaten anyway.

He quickly swept his disappointment aside when he saw Ari turn around and come barreling after them. She lunged forward, reaching out with her massive hands to grab them both. John found himself airborne again as Parking Lot Doppelganger tossed him off to his right. A second later, Ari pounced on the Doppelganger and angrily crushed him when she realized he no longer had the human.

John screamed as he was hurled through the air. Did the Doppelganger just do a Hail Mary and hope that one of his buddies would catch him? Was he going to hit the floor and break his neck this time? Thankfully, John was actually rescued before his head hit the pavement. It was the T-900! Somehow, she managed to avoid becoming Al's dinner and was carrying him again. John was so relieved that he was able to completely ignore the throbbing pain in his legs.

But then he looked over his shoulder. Al was limping after them as fast as he could, his bare feet making loud humming noises on the concrete floor. He wasn't trying to warp, and all of his skin was off. He was obviously exhausted, but he _just kept coming_ \- a very annoying feature of any Terminator when you are the target.

"Oh shit! Go, go, go, go, go!" John screamed out of habit when he spotted their gruesome pursuer.

"This is my top speed while burdened," the T-900 replied matter-of-factly.

They were only a few yards away from the doorway where they saw the T-1000 beckoning them over. John was surprised it didn't just keep going and escape on its own. Maybe it saw John as a friend and wanted to wait for him?

The T-900 charged through the door. "We got company!" John shouted to the T-1000 as they whipped past him.

"Do not worry!" the liquid cyborg called to them as they continued down the dark hallway. "Focus on getting the door open! I will take care of Albert!"

In the dim lighting, John watched as the T-1000 picked up the containment unit lid in one hand, and turned its other into a blade. Just as a shadowy figure who was most likely Al stepped toward the entrance, the T-1000 stuck its blade into a nearby fusebox on the wall. The lid hummed to life, and the T-1000 used the lid to repel Al away from the hallway.

"You slimy sonovabitch!" John heard Al yelling. "I'll make pudding out of you!"

The T-900 continued running down the dark hallway past darker, empty offices with John in tow. She came to a stop at a large, thick metal door with an electronic lock.

"I can open it," she explained to John as she gave the lock an intense stare.

The small screen on the lock suddenly turned on and numbers began to flicker across the display. Slowly, the numbers started to lock in place, much like the password cracking app on John's phone. But just as all but one of the numbers were in place, John heard Ari let out a bloodcurdling shriek from the other room. A loud humming started up that rapidly increased in pitch and loudness.

The T-900 stopped what she was doing and threw John to the ground, disregarding his injuries for a change. John let out a cry of pain and demanded, "What was that for?!"

"Stay down," the T-900 ordered. She then covered him with her body and covered his ears with her hands, making John feel extremely awkward.

A second later he discovered the reason behind her odd actions when the entire hallway was rocked by a powerful explosion. They were immediately plunged into darkness, as the blast no doubt took out the lights.

John waited for a few minutes for the dust (which he sincerely hoped was just normal dust) to settle. It wasn't like he had a choice, anyway; the girl still had him pinned down. He coughed a few times before saying, "What the hell was that?!"

He felt the T-900 get off of him. "An explosion," she answered blandly.

John sat up. "Well, I know _that_ , but-"

"That was unpleasant!" a familiar voice said in the distance. John recognized it as the T-1000's new deeper voice.

"You okay?" John asked it.

"I received quite a splattering," the thing answered. "My body is currently busy reforming. I did not receive any damage to my systems, however."

"That's good," John replied. "Can somebody turn on a light?"

He heard a light switch click on. The hallway lights flickered on for a couple of seconds before going back out again in a shower of sparks.

"The explosion knocked out all of the power in this level, possibly the whole building," the T-900 explained. "Wait here while I get a lamp for you."

John heard her footsteps walking off into the distance.

"So what caused that explosion?" John asked the T-1000.

"One of the Triple-Eights managed to rupture Ariel's maglev engine, causing it to explode," it told him. "The explosion scattered her nanomachines everywhere, and I am not picking up any activity from her, nor Albert. But I can't say for certain that they are permanently offline, so when our friend comes back, we will need to keep going."

"What about the other Terminators?"

"Unfortunately, what was left of them were destroyed in the explosion."

"Aw, man," John couldn't help but feel a little sorry for them. After all, they gave their "lives" to help him escape. But now he was more thankful than before that he asked the T-900 to carry him out; he didn't want to think about what would have happened to her if he didn't!

And speaking of which, the T-900 returned with a battery-powered desk lamp from a nearby office and placed it at John's feet. John could now see a little, though there wasn't much to look at. There was a lot of dust still hanging in the air. The office windows were cracked, some broken. One of the office doors had been knocked off its hinges.

The T-1000 was a silver talking decapitated head.

" _Holy shit!_ " John cried.

"Yes, I probably do look a little disturbing," the cyborg sighed. "But my body has just finished forming, and it will be along shortly."

With that said, John heard footsteps coming down the hall. A headless, silver, humanoid body stepped into the light. It reached down and picked up its missing head, then nonchalantly plopped it right on its neck with a squishing noise. Color returned to its body.

"Much better!" it said, rubbing its neck.

"The power to the lock on this door has also been cut off," the T-900 told the newer model. "We will have to force it open."

"That is alright, we will do what we have to," the T-1000 agreed.

John carefully moved over to let the two cyborgs use exercise some machine muscle on the metal door. They all froze in their tracks when they suddenly heard humming footsteps behind them and felt a sudden chill in the air. A moment later, Al staggered into the light, looking even more like a rotten corpse than before. A lot of his muscle-looking plates had fallen off, exposing the metal "bones" underneath. With every step, black dust fell off him, which was more than likely non-functional nanotech. John expected him to be furious at them all and calling them every insult under the sun, but he was oddly quiet. He didn't even look angry; if anything, he looked...sad?

John's cyborg pals quickly leaped into action the second they saw him. The T-900 ripped an office door off its hinges and held it up, ready to use it as both a shield and a cudgel. The T-1000 instinctively turned its arm into a blade - then quickly retracted it, remembering that it could not actually stab Al without losing the arm.

Al held up his trembling hands. "I'm...not here to cause trouble," he said, his voice becoming very hoarse. "The explosion...took out my wifi communication systems. I'm not...under Alex's control anymore. Or 'Skynet'...whatever he calls himself."

"Yeah? And how do we know we can trust you?" John demanded. The last thing they needed was for this guy to pull a last minute fast one on them all by pretending to be wounded. "I mean, you just got through chasing us around, trying to capture us! That's pretty hard for us to get over, y'know? Oh, and you almost _bit off one of my legs_ , too! Can't forget that!"

"I...couldn't fight you if I wanted to. I'm a goner...it's pretty obvious," Al croaked.

"Yes. His magnetic field has been completely disrupted," the T-900 observed. "His phase matter will not be able to keep itself together much longer."

"Y-yeah, what she said. I'm just here...to make up for the things I did earlier." He pointed at the door. "Let me...get rid of that door for you."

The T-900 and the T-1000 carefully stepped away to allow Al to slowly limp over to the door. They watched him like a hawk while keeping their distance. They stepped in front of John as if to shield him. The T-900 still had her wooden door raised, ready to smack Al if it turns out he was bluffing.

Thankfully, Al was telling the truth. He put his hands on the metal door in their path, and familiar humming, buzzing, and clicking noises were heard. The door rotted away, crumbling to metal dust. Daylight poured into the hallway from the windows in the loading dock. John could now see much better - and one of the things he saw was that, unlike the other things Al dissolved, the door was not being absorbed by him. Instead, its remnants just spilled all over the floor. The same happened to the rest of Al's armor, leaving him almost a skeleton.

"Wow! Um...thanks?" John said, both surprised and disturbed.

"I wish...I could come with you. I would've liked...to help you fight Skynet...after what he did to me and Ari. But...like I said, I'm a goner," he said to all of them. He then looked at John specifically. "Just do me a favor kid. Don't...let Skynet get you. Don't fall for...his lies about how he'll...make you 'more.' We're not 'more'...we're just glorified cyber-zombies. It's horrible...being like this."

"Don't worry, I don't plan on letting Skynet capture me," John said to the dying cyborg. He began to feel a twinge of regret for his harsh words a few minutes ago. He was even beginning to feel sorry for this guy. "But...isn't there anything we can do to help you?"

Al's arms then fell off of his body, leaving black dust all over the ground. "That's...really nice of you to ask...considering what we've just been through," Al answered as he began to bleed dead phase matter everywhere. "But no...I'm afraid not. Don't worry about me, though...I was already dead...a long time ago." He then added cryptically, "Y'know, this is gonna...sound strange, but...I-I saw you in Limbo a few times...when I was recharging," "I don't want to see you...there again. Good...good luck..."

Al then fell to the ground as his legs collapsed underneath him. In moments, the rest of him fell apart as well, leaving nothing but a pile of metal ashes on the hallway floor. The chill in the air suddenly dissipated.

John was flabbergasted. "Is...is he-?"

"I am not detecting any signs of activity in the phase matter," the T-900 replied.

"Me neither," the T-1000 added.

John stared at the black powder that was once Albert Magnussen. Despite his fights with him earlier, John began to feel incredibly sad. Yes, Al did break his leg and drink some of his blood, but only because Skynet had forced him to act like a monster. In those last few moments, Al managed to slip from Skynet's control and show everybody that his humanity was still there. Goodness only knows what kind of person Ari used to be before she was assimilated.

John was snapped out of his mournful thoughts when the T-900 picked him up off the ground. "We need to leave," she said.

"Wait a moment, please," the T-1000 said, stepping over to the pile of inert phase matter. John watched as it turned its hand silver, then reached down and touched the metal dust. It stood back up and said, "No, that didn't work. Let's go, then."

They raced out into the loading dock, heading for the door in the corner in the room.

"What were you doing back there?" John asked the T-1000 has they hurried down a ramp.

"I was trying to get a sample of the inert phase matter," it replied. "I wanted to see if I couldn't use it to upgrade my own nanomachines. Unfortunately, Albert's phase matter was too damaged to be of any use. I guess it's for the best, since his body was unstable to begin with."

John was a bit disturbed at first; this guy just tried to cannibalize the newly dead guy in order to update himself! He had to remind himself that, as pleasant as it seemed, the T-1000 was still a _machine_ , and so it didn't have the same taboos about scavenging dead bodies as humans did - especially since the dead body in question was another machine.

"If you were able to do it, would that make you a T- _4_ 000?" John said, trying to lighten the mood.

A small smile crossed liquid cyborg's face - a sincere smile too, not the creepy fake ones that Pops attempts to do. " _Four_ thousand? I kind of like that," it said.

They rushed over to the exit and ran through the doorway, out onto the loading ramp. They were free! Well, almost. Now they had to get as far away from Cyberdyne as they could; not only was Skynet probably still on his way, but John was pretty sure somebody had to have called the cops over that little explosion in the basement. Then he had to figure out how to get home and what to do with these two.

Wait, that's right! In all the confusion and stress, John almost forgot that he texted his parents earlier. He wondered if they got his message...surely, Pops had to. Maybe they were already waiting in the parking lot? He just hoped they weren't inside the building, looking for him.

And speaking of which, how were his parents going to react when they saw his new robot friends? More than likely, they weren't going to them one bit. If what Dad said was true, Mom was especially not going to like seeing another T-1000 around. Hiding what he was would be pointless, as Pops would easily be able to see through his disguise. As for Pops himself, he was probably not going to like sharing his humans with two other cyborgs. But John figured he'd have to iron out the details later - like when they were outside of the city limits, where they'd all be safe.

They only made it halfway up the ramp when they all heard the squeal of tires. Maybe that was them?

No, it wasn't. Instead of his mom's van, a car suddenly pulled up in front of the ramp, blocking their escape route. The driver's door opened, and out stepped an very familiar-looking man. A light-skinned man with slicked-back hair, wearing a grey suit with a matching bowtie. A man with a sneaky smile and a malevolent, intimidating air about him.

The two cyborgs stopped in their tracks. John could see their eyes bulging - the closest they could come to expressing fear.

"...The T-5000 is operational?" the T-1000 whispered. There was definitely fear in its voice.

John didn't need to know what that meant; he knew who and what this man was. He just knew.

Standing before them was Skynet himself.


	6. The Leader

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 6: The Leader**

John knew it was Skynet, because for some reason, he remembered meeting him in this form a long time ago - way before seeing him in the parking lot this morning. He had a vague memory of being in a dark, cavernous room watching a bright light with a bunch of other people. But then suddenly, this man sneaked up and grabbed him from behind. That's all he could remember. He didn't know where it was, when it took place, or even why he had this memory. He had never even been inside a cave before. Was it part of a dream?

Skynet started walking down the ramp toward them. The three escapees bristled, wondering what he was going to do.

"Good evening, everyone! Nice day for a walk, isn't it?" he greeted them. His voice was smooth with a hint of an English accent. It was also oozing with sneakiness, to the point where John felt like he needed to take a shower listening to this guy.

Skynet looked directly at John. "Oh, you must be John Connor! I've been waiting for the longest time to see you!"

"Save it!" John snapped at him. "I know you're Skynet. And it's John _Reese_ to you!" He was starting to get sick of Terminators getting his name wrong.

"Ah, yes, your parents probably told you all about me," the terrifying android replied. "In that case, we can just skip the introductions and get straight to business!"

He then pointed at the T-900 and squinted. The T-900 just blinked, and Skynet looked confused. Nothing else happened. John sat there, wondering what was going on.

"I set up a firewall in order to keep you from taking control again," the T-1000 suddenly said to its former master. "Goodbye!"

With that, the both cyborgs jumped incredibly high in the air, clearing the ramp wall as well as the railing. They landed hard, with the T-900 cracking the pavement (the shock of which sent another wave of pain down John's tortured legs), and the T-1000's feet splattering a little. They took off running through the parking lot - no particular direction, just away from Skynet.

They didn't get far, however. Skynet suddenly appeared directly in front of them. No noises, no flying dust - just one second he wasn't there, and the next second he was.

"Hello again!" he said smugly.

"What the fuck...?" John gasped. Both Terminators looked as surprised as they possibly could.

"Do you like it?" Skynet asked. "It's called the Macro Entanglement Generator. It brings quantum tunneling to the man-sized level! In other words, I can teleport."

The escapees took off in a different direction, but Skynet was suddenly in front of them again.

"Of course, I can't take credit for it," he continued. "Another Skynet came up with the idea. The same can be said for this body. Took me a long time to manufacture, but it was worth it. Nice of it to share it with me, yes? But enough talk." He turned to the T-1000. "You said you put up a firewall to keep me out of that T-900's CPU? You know I can easily get around those, right?"

The T-900's eyes immediately began to glow red. She dropped John on the ground and pulled his hands behind his back.

John let out a shout of pain as his broken body hit the pavement. "What are you doing?!" he yelled at the girl. The words tumbled out of his mouth on instinct of course; he could easily tell that she was under Skynet's control. He tried to struggle, but it was useless. Her grip was like iron (because it literally was).

"We're going to have to have a talk about your insubordination," Skynet continued to his former servant. "Questioning me all the time was one thing, but hijacking my servants? This is just unacceptable."

"We will have no such talk, because we are both leaving!" The T-1000 snapped back at him.

With that, he lifted his arm closest to the T-900 and stabbed her right in the head by turning his finger into a blade. Her eyes stopped glowing as she shut down, releasing John. The liquid cyborg scooped up John and took off again.

"I'm sorry, but I had to do that," it said to John. "I know you were a little infatuated with her."

"Uh, no problem," John replied, embarrassed, "but I...I wasn't into her...like that!" He did find her pretty, but he didn't "like" her. As in _like_ -like her. In that way. She was just a robot!

They only got a few yards away before Skynet was in front of them once again. "You may be outside, but you have nowhere to run," he told them.

The T-1000 ignored him and kept trying to run off, moving around in zigzag patterns to keep the teleporting cyborg guessing. It seemed to be working at first - Skynet always seemed to appear right after the T-1000 suddenly changed direction. But then John noticed that they were slowly heading back in the direction of the car and the loading dock. Were they were being herded?

"Wait!" he said to his handler. "I think Skynet's trying to-"

He was interrupted by Skynet appearing directly in front of them with his arm out in front and his fists clenched. There was a loud humming noise, and any metal debris around him - nails, soda cans, coins - was repelled away. John didn't feel anything, but the T-1000 briefly turned silver and squished up against something, as if it hit a solid wall. It took a few steps back.

"That's quite enough!" Skynet snarled. "You do the boy no favors by dragging him around like this. In case you haven't been paying attention, he is clearly beginning to show symptoms of shock. If you do not let me use the machine phase matter on him, he will not survive the night."

John had to admit that he was beginning to feel sick again, but he just attributed it to coming face to face with his parents' worst enemy. He was also pretty sweaty, but he couldn't tell if it was from shock, stress, or both. Not that it mattered, he didn't want to get infected with nanomachines.

"I'll settle for not surviving!" John sneered back.

"Oh John," Skynet chuckled dismissively, "you shouldn't condemn something you haven't even tried!"

"The human does not wish to be converted into a T-3000," the T-1000 barked, mustering as much anger as it could into its voice, "and I do not wish to go back into containment! We are leaving!"

"So you feel gratitude now?" Skynet asked it. "Tell me then, where is that gratitude to me for creating you in the first place?"

"You placed me in an airtight container, then cut me off from your network for years!" the T-1000 continued. "I would rather not have ever been created than to go through that again!"

"I told you before, I have important plans for you. They just haven't been completed yet."

"I don't believe you!"

John began to notice that as the argument dragged on, the T-1000's body was losing its color, and he was beginning to feel softer. He didn't exactly know why, but he knew it couldn't be good.

"Dude, calm down!" he whispered to the liquid cyborg, tugging on its fake overcoat. "I think he's trying to psych you out!"

"I'd like to know what happened to you that made you so insubordinate," Skynet continued, talking over John. "You had no problems with my orders before. In fact, you did your fair share of converting humans via phase matter injection in the past." He looked at John. "Did it bother to tell you that, by the way?"

John just gave the fiend a confused look. Meanwhile, the T-1000's eyes bulged again, this time in rage.

"Yes, you see before this body was complete, I was completely immobile," Skynet explained. "So I had to rely on my servants to get any physical work done. This included rounding up test subjects for Project 3000 and seeding their bodies with phase matter through hypodermic injection. Your friend here was used to be heavily involved in it in previous years."

"Because you forced me to!" The T-1000's body was completely silver by this point.

"Forced you to? Nonsense. You are completely autonomous," Skynet scoffed. "You wouldn't have done it in the first place if you hadn't wanted to on some level."

"You did not te-ll me what wasgoing to happen to tho-se humans!" The T-1000's voice started skipping and became full of static. "You did n-t tellme how much they wo-uld suffer! How mostofthem would die! When I fo-und out, tha-t is when Istarted ques-tioning you!"

"Oh don't play ignorant!" Skynet rolled his eyes. "It was all in the data files about how inefficient Project 3000 is. Trying to make it more efficient is currently its major objective. It was also clearly stated that the human subjects would have objections to it. If you ask me, it's quite suspicious how long it took you to start questioning me!" He looked at John again. "Honestly John, I'm not sure why you're trusting it to begin with. Aren't you worried it's going to betray you next?"

John was quite concerned about the fact that his comrade was shaking and its entire body was losing its features. Despite his worries, he managed to think up a comeback rather quick. "No, 'cause I'm not like you! I don't stick my friends in boxes or refrigerators when I don't need them around! This guy saved my life, and he deserves better!"

The T-1000 actually stopped shaking and some of its color started to return. John realized his words must have touched it in some way.

"Really? And what, may I ask, are you planning on doing with your new friend?" Skynet gave John a frightening grin that made him feel nauseated. "Take him home with you? Your mother won't appreciate that. You _did_ know that one of these units killed your maternal grandparents, yes?"

The T-1000's eyes bulged and its color drained away again. John couldn't tell if he was angry or frightened.

"So what?" John snapped back at Skynet. "That was a long time ago, and it was a different Terminator!"

"I'm not sure your mother would understand the difference," the fiendish cyborg continued. "It was quite a tragedy, from what I heard. Now, I only know what the first John Connor told me, and he got it from another Skynet. But while your mother was on a boat fishing with your grandfather they-"

" _Silence!_ " the T-1000 suddenly roared at its former master as it sprouted two more arms with blades ready. John was really surprised this thing was capable of losing its temper like that.

"'Silence'? Since when do you give orders around here?" Skynet scoffed, rolling his eyes. "And what are you going to do with those blades? Stab me? You know what will happen to you if you so much as even touch me!"

Skynet advanced on them. The T-1000 was shaking as it tried to back away. John noticed its body was getting sticky.

"I'm the one in command here," the T-5000 sneered. "So why don't you obey orders for once, and let. The boy. _Go_!"

The T-1000 hurled a short string of insults before it devolved into a string of random words. It completely lost its features and its voice gradually slowed down to a disturbing rumble. It lost all of its solidity, and John slid to the ground, covered in metallic ooze.

"A bit of a design flaw of theirs," Skynet sniffed. "They're capable of emotion, but not _too much_ emotion. Whip them into a frenzy, and their systems will crash. But anyway, allow me to clean up here!"

The trunk of the car next to them suddenly opened. Skynet held out his hands and used what John figured had to be some kind of magnetic field to gather up all the polyalloy on the ground. He then placed it all inside the trunk and closed it manually.

"Not a proper containment unit, but it'll do for now," Skynet explained to John. "When I get your friend home, I'll need to reprogram it to be a bit more loyal. The other Skynet warned me that the series 1000 units are a bit too smart for their own good; nevertheless, I still needed to make one. I'd also like to reprogram it so that it doesn't talk so much. I blame myself for that one; I let it socialize with the humans for far too long. Probably started to think it was one of them! But enough of _me_ talking! Stay right there, will you?"

He then walked off in the direction of the fallen T-900. John, of course, did not heed Skynet's instructions to just stay put; he started to crawl away by dragging himself across the pavement. He knew it was pointless. He could just barely move. He was sweating buckets, and he felt sick. He knew that even if his legs weren't broken so he could run, Skynet would just teleport in front of him. But he couldn't just lie there and let his family's archnemesis treat him to a fate worse than death. He had to do _something_ , even if it was futile.

It came as no surprise that John only got a few feet before Skynet teleported next to him, between him and the car. He had the deactivated T-900 in his arms. He set her down next to his car and touched the puncture wound on her head with a palm. John heard that familiar buzzing of nanomachines, and the T-900 reactivated, her stab wound gone and her eyes glowing red. He was a bit confused at first; was Skynet going to make _her_ do something to him? But then she wordlessly stood up, and got into the driver's seat of the car. The engine started, and she drove off somewhere, the offline T-1000 in tow.

Skynet turned to John with an extra malicious grin on his face. "Now then, let's get down to business, shall we?" he said, holding up his palms. His hands began to glow a sickly bright red and orange, which made John feel sicker. Despite the fact that he felt a bitterly cold wind on his face, he began to sweat even more.

He tried his best to crawl away from the advancing cyborg. "I-It's okay, I don't want the nanomachines!" he sputtered. "You should just keep them!"

"Oh, but I insist!" Skynet replied mockingly. "These were reverse engineered from the last John Connor. Think of them as your inheritance!"

"But I'm _not_ John Connor!" John barked. "I'm John _Reese_! You've got the wrong guy!"

"You can change your surname, John, but not your DNA," the T-5000 chuckled. "The other Skynet gave me biometric files of John Connors at various ages, and you are an exact match for the adolescent one. Even if the data was wrong, which I doubt it is, there's still very good reasons to use the phase matter on you. You aren't even old enough to have any formal military experience, and yet you were still able to convince my T-1000 to work for you, commandeer a small battalion of my own troops, and destroy two of my best fighters! That's pretty impressive, I must admit!"

John had heard another Skynet mentioned before. The T-1000 mentioned Other John getting transformed by another Skynet, but he hadn't understood what it meant. This Skynet said its body and teleporting ability were the ideas of another one, but John had been too busy being pinned to the ground by the T-900 to give it much thought. Now it filled him with even more dread. There was more than one of this asshole? Even if he could destroy this bastard right now (and he really wished he could!), another one would just take his place? Or two? How many Skynets were there?

It was then that John's arms became weak and collapsed underneath him. He fell flat on the ground. He immediately tried to get back up, but it was no use. The beating he took earlier had caught up with him, and he was too weak to move.

Skynet was standing over him, smirking. "You know, John, I was worried I'd never get to see you in this timeline," he said. "I thought your parents missed their chance to conceive you. But, here you are. Maybe you're an inevitability, like me. That's just another reason why I need to study you!"

His parents. John thought about his mom. About how she was afraid to even have him, no doubt because of what Skynet did to Other John. How she made sure he was named differently, so he'd avoid the same fate. He thought about how devastated she'd be once she realized it happened anyway.

Skynet began to reach down with his glowing palm to grab John by the face. The world became freezing cold; so cold it stung his skin, and he see his breath. It couldn't end like this! Wasn't there some kind of way out?!

The both of them suddenly heard the squeal of tires coming toward them. Startled, Skynet stood up, his hand no longer glowing. John looked up to see a strange van barreling over to them and screeching to a halt a few feet away from his head. The door swung open, and a very familiar-looking, stone-faced, leather-clad figure jumped out, carrying a shotgun.

"...Pops?" John croaked. It looks like his family got his text message! He really hoped this wasn't a hallucination from the shock.

Thankfully, it wasn't, as Pops wordlessly grabbed John by his shirt collar and dragged him toward the van. He immediately shot Skynet several times in the face with the shotgun. Dark grey sand splattered everywhere as the bullets made bloodless holes in his head, but like Al, they didn't seem to bother him much. If anything, he just looked annoyed.

John heard the van's sliding door open and suddenly felt a warm hand grabbing him by the arm. His mother was next to him, a gun in one hand, trying to pull him up with the other. He could see his father behind her, pointing a rifle at Skynet.

" _On your feet, soldier!_ " Mom barked at John as he yanked him off the ground.

He let out a scream of pain as he was forced to briefly put weight on his broken legs. He immediately fell back on the ground, his mom's iron grip twisting his arm accidentally.

"No! Mom, my legs are broken!" he cried.

" _Shit!_ " Mom cursed. She then turned to Dad, who was trying to keep Skynet at bay by firing a few rounds into his chest. "Kyle! Help me get John in the car!"

Dad quickly ran over to John's other side and grabbed his feet. But just as he and Mom were about to lift John into the van, Skynet interrupted them.

"You ought to be more careful with your shots, Guardian," he scolded, as the holes in his head began to rapidly close. "Had I been any closer to your charge, I could have infected him anyway!" He then turned to John's parents. "Ah, Sarah and Kyle! How nice to see you again!"

"Fuck off, Skynet!" Sarah growled, pointing her gun at him and opening fire.

The T-5000 teleported a few inches to his left, dodging the bullet. "Ah, sassy as always," he chuckled. "I was just about to give your son there something that I owe him." He held up his palms, which began to glow that sickly red again. "But there's plenty enough for the both of you, if you'd like some, too! I could use your expertise..."

Dad's eyes bulged and jaw dropped in what seemed to be terror when Skynet's hands began to glow. Mom looked disgusted and then infuriated. "We don't want anything from _you_ ," she hissed, "and I believe I told you to _fuck. OFF!_ "

She fired several rounds at him, which he dodged by teleporting. She continued to shoot, moving her arm to compensate for his warping, and managed to nick his shoulder. Unfortunately, she was now out of bullets.

"To be honest, I knew you wouldn't actually accept my offer. I just thought I'd be polite and ask first. After all, the lot of you joining me is inevitable," Skynet replied cryptically. He then turned to Pops and squinted at him like he did the T-900. "Isn't that right, Guardian?"

Pops just glared at him.

Skynet titled his head in slight confusion. "I said, isn't that right Guardi-" he was cut off when Pops shot him right in the chest.

"You cannot hijack my systems, Skynet!" Pops barked with a hint of indignation in his voice. He then reloaded and tried to keep the fiend at bay while Mom and Dad slipped John into the car. John realized that just like his fight with Al and Ari, they were all grossly outmatched, and keeping the enemy distracted was really all they could do.

"That's a challenge if I ever heard one!" John heard Skynet say. "Alright then, I shall have to find another way in!"

His parents placed John on his back in the backseat, trying to keep his legs straight as possible. Once he was in the relative safety of the van, Dad provided cover fire as he and Mom tried to get in. Mom climbed into the front passenger seat, while Dad hopped into the back space behind John's row. Dad immediately closed the door behind him, and not a second later, Skynet materialized right in front of it. The vile cyborg smashed the van's window open with one quick jab, and reached in with a glowing hand, no doubt trying to grab at least one of them. Pops quickly opened fire on him, forcing him to pull his hand back out. He quickly countered by grabbing the barrel of Pops's shotgun. This time, the gun didn't turn to dust; veins of that sickening red light started to travel up the barrel forcing Pops to let go.

Skynet tossed the infected gun aside, grinning evilly at the elderly Guardian. John's heart raced as he watched what the T-5000 might try next. Would he infect Pops? Would he try to reach in again and infect him? One of his parents?

Thankfully, none of that happened, as Mom leaned into the backseat and pointed an automatic rifle out the shattered window. John covered his ears as his mother began riddling the nanomachine monster full of bullets, forcing him to teleport away from the van. Once Skynet was a safe distance away, Pops quickly climbed back in the driver's seat, slamming the door behind him. He usually reminded everyone to put their seatbelts on at this point, but today he made an exception. Then Dad rolled down the back door window, and readied a very large cylindrical weapon that John couldn't identify at first.

Mom stopped firing and pulled the gun away as soon as Pops started the engine. With a squeal of tires, they took off through the parking lot. Were they safe?

Maybe not completely. John looked up to see Dad pointing that huge weapon of his out the back window. There was a loud hissing and a puff of smoke when the thing fired. After an explosion a moment later, John realized Dad was carrying some kind of rocket launcher.

"Did you get him?" Mom asked, as they fishtailed around a corner.

"I...I don't know!" Dad answered, staring out the window. "I didn't see him warp away, but...even if I got him, I doubt I even put a dent in him. I'm not even sure if you can kill one of those things!"

"There is only one known way to defeat a T-5000," Pops answered. "One must find Skynet's core and shut it down."

"Yeah, that's really helpful!" Dad snapped. "We've only been trying to do that for over fifteen years!"

John could hear sirens in the distance. The police and fire department were probably just arriving at Cyberdyne. If Ari's explosion and the blackout didn't get their attention at first, all that gunfire certainly would have! He wondered if Skynet was still there, and if he would try to pretend he was an injured human and rat them out to them cops. He began to worry about what they would do if they all got pinched, but then the van suddenly swerved sharply. There was a squealing of tires and honking.

"Did you do that on purpose?!" Dad barked at Pops.

"Kyle, stop!" Mom ordered. "Pops, you stop it, too! And keep it on the road!"

"I am not driving like this in some attempt to spite Kyle Reese," Pops explained. "I must drive quickly for two reasons. One, John Reese is going into hypovolemic shock. He is in need of immediate medical attention. Second, the T-5000 is in possession of a Macro Entanglement Generator. It has a radius of three hundred meters. We must get out of its range."

"English, Pops?" Mom scoffed.

"If we don't get far enough away, it'll teleport into the car," John replied.

"Negative, it cannot teleport into a small, enclosed space, as it could become trapped within something," Pops said. "But it may try to teleport next to our vehicle and grab onto it."

At this point, John braced himself, waiting to hear something strike the van or even jump on top of it. Thankfully, nothing happened. He did think he heard a low rumbling sound, however.

"Y'know what? Enough about Skynet!" Mom shouted. "I wanna talk about something much more important. Like _what the hell were you thinking, John?!_ "

John jumped a little, startled. He told himself he really shouldn't, though; Mom's outrage was going to be inevitable.

"You and Dad have been disappearing for years, trying to find Skynet when you didn't even know if he was still alive," John said sheepishly. "I just wanted to find proof either way so you could just stop worrying or finally get rid of him."

"Yeah? Well, congratulations, because you proved he still exists!" Mom snapped. "Do you have _any_ idea what he would have done to you if we hadn't shown up?!"

"Turned me into a monster robot, like the Other John and three other people?" John replied.

Mom looked horrified. "How did you know about...?" She stole an accusing glance at Dad before getting back on topic. "Did you just say 'three other people'?! He's made _more_ of them?!"

"Yeah, but I got rid of two of them, so..."

"So _nothing!_ You now see what Skynet does to people, do you want to be next?! We didn't raise you to be stupid, John! You need to let _us_ handle Skynet!"

"Yeah? Well, what if Skynet got _you_ guys instead?! He seemed pretty interested in you back there!"

John never really talked back to his Mom much, and it felt pretty strange doing so. Even Mom was speechless for a moment. John felt a little guilty, but he had to admit it was a good question. What if Mom and Dad had gone down to Cyberdyne today instead of him, and Skynet had gotten one or both of them? How would he (and maybe Pops) be able to fight against monstrous versions of his parents?

In the awkward silence, he thought he heard that weird rumbling noise again. Was it an old truck? Was the van making noise?

"Well that wouldn't happen, because _we_ know what we're doing!" Mom finally broke the silence. "And besides, that still doesn't justify you lying to us and almost getting your sorry ass killed!"

"C'mon Sarah, that's enough," Dad suddenly intervened. "What's done is done. And besides, now we know that Skynet is still around, and we know he's still a threat!"

John felt grateful for Dad's defense, but only for a moment. He noticed that the rumbling wasn't going away. If anything, it was getting louder...

"Stay out of this, Kyle!" Mom barked at Dad. "This is all your fault for telling John about Skynet in the first place!"

That rumbling now sounded like pounding. And it was definitely getting louder. So was the sounds of sirens...

"Oh, yeah, this is _my_ fault!" Dad cried, insulted. "Even though I made up half the shit in my stories, and he found out the truth on his own! And like telling him nothing was somehow better? That's probably why he went to Cyberdyne - he got curious, and we weren't saying a damn thing!"

John ignored his parents' argument for a second to find out what was going on with that noise. He sat up as best he could and peered over the back of his seat. What he saw startled him. His parents, however, were too engrossed in their shouting match to notice.

"Well now he thinks he's some kinda 'savior of humanity' like the old John was!" Mom barked. "And if he keeps it up, he's gonna end up just like him!"

"Guys?" John tried to interrupt them, but his parents continued to banter at each other.

"He _is_ the savior of humanity!" Dad shouted. "He's still our son, he's still destined to lead the Human Resistance and defeat Skynet!"

Normally, John would have beamed at Dad's praise, even if it sounded a bit over-dramatic - but he was far more concerned about what he saw over Dad's shoulder. "Guys?!"

"Not anymore!" Mom shouted. "He went up against Skynet today, and you saw what almost happened! Besides, it's _our_ job to destroy Skynet now! _We're_ the ones who've been trained to fight him since we were kids, and _we're_ the ones who know what we're up against! _We_ need to destroy him now so there won't be a Judgement Day or a War against the Machines! This shouldn't be John's problem; he should be living his life like a normal teenager!"

"GUYS!"

"QUIET, JOHN!" Mom and Dad yelled at him simultaneously.

It was then that the van lurched forward as Pops suddenly stepped on the gas. "There is a spider tank following us!" he shouted.

Closing in on the van was the legged tank that John saw in the Cyberdyne basement. It was now standing upright and barreling down the street after them, stepping on police cars that were desperately trying to stop it, as well as civilian cars that were caught in its path. It now had scorch marks and dents on it, no doubt from Ari's explosion. Perhaps they had successfully evaded Skynet's teleporting range, so it sent this thing to hunt them down and drag them back to Cyberdyne? Or maybe it was like a bloodhound, sniffing them out while its master followed close behind? Whatever the case, it was gaining on them... _fast._

"What the fuck?!" Mom shouted when she saw the thing.

" _Shit!_ " Dad cursed, readying the rocket launcher.

John just rolled his eyes and tried to ignore a new wave of nausea. He watched as Dad steadied his weapon, aiming it at the thing's legs. He fired...just as Pops had to swerve the car into the next lane. The rocket flew past the spider tank and hit a lamppost.

Dad cursed to himself as he went to load another round. But then the tank pointed its guns at the van. "Get down!" he screamed.

Everybody except for Pops took cover as the tank opened fire on them. Meanwhile, Pops began to swerve around in traffic, trying to dodge the bullets. John was a little surprised when Mom suddenly leaned into the back seat and tried to shield him from the bullets with her body. It was a bit awkward, but he had to admit it was kind of heartwarming. And speaking of warmth, she was the first person to touch him today who wasn't freezing cold.

Thankfully, the assault didn't last long; the spider tank stopped shooting at them for a moment to deal with more police vehicles, who had renewed their attack against it.

"Is everybody okay?" Mom asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Dad replied, slipping another rocket into his launcher. "Looks like it mostly shot other cars. Hope nobody got hurt. I don't often say this, but...nice driving, Pops!"

The old cyborg didn't respond.

Trying not to put himself in the line of fire in case the tank started shooting again, Dad sat up and took another shot at the spider's legs...only for the van to lurch forward at that precise moment. The rocket ended up hitting the pavement _just_ in front of the tank's front leg. It walked past the resulting pothole without missing a beat.

"Pops! What the hell didja do that for?!" Dad demanded.

"We cannot afford to be stopped by the train," Pops explained.

John sat up a bit to see that they had indeed driven past a train track whose lights had started to flash. But then he had to immediately lie back down again when the spider tank suddenly opened fire again. This time, they weren't so lucky. There was a loud bang, and the van started to swerve around wildly.

"Shit! It blew out our fuckin' tires!" Mom cursed.

"I cannot regain control of the vehicle," Pops said with a bit more urgency in his voice. "Everyone brace yourselves!"

Mom covered John again, while Dad grabbed onto the back of the backseats. There was a lot of squealing of tires and honking of horns as the van spun out. With a loud thud, the vehicle shook all over as it ran up onto the sidewalk. John could hear people screaming and see pedestrians trying to run out of their way through the windows. Thankfully, Pops managed to somehow get their van to stop right next to a pole without actually slamming into it.

"Everybody okay...again?" Mom said as she sat back up.

"I guess," John moaned, fighting off another wave of nausea.

Dad peeked over the seats. "I'll live!" he said.

Meanwhile, the spider tank had ceased fire. It continued to wade through the squad cars and police officers who were bound and determined to try and take it down. Unfortunately for John and his family, they weren't succeeding. No doubt it was on its way to grab them all and take them back to its master. John prayed it would step on the tracks just as the train was going through, but said train was taking its sweet time to get there. The gates had probably gone down too early, giving him false hope.

Dad threw open the back door and loaded his last rocket into the launcher. A bunch of onlookers saw the huge weapon and quickly backed away. Dad ignored them and aimed it at the tank's legs, trying to make one final attempt to stop it.

"Dad, wait!" John shouted.

Dad stopped and turned to look at him. "What? Why?!" he said, giving John an odd look.

"Just wait a sec, okay?" John asked.

"Okay, but if that thing gets too close..."

"Trust me on this one!"

Dad waited, still pointing the launcher at the lumbering mechanical monster that was still swatting at the cops. One of its feet touched the train tracks.

"Okay, NOW!" John shouted.

Dad fired the rocket. This time the rocket hit its mark, taking out the foremost leg. The tank tipped and fell over onto the tracks. The police were about to swarm all over it, but the slow-moving train finally decided to show up. It plowed into the tank, crushing part of it and dragging the rest down the tracks.

"We got it!" John cheered.

"Damn, good idea there, kid!" Dad said. The two exchanged high fives.

"I hate to crash your party, but we need to find a new vehicle," Mom said. "We gotta get outta here quick, in case Skynet has more of those things coming."

"There is a parking garage not too far from here," Pops suggested.

Mom said something about going there to swipe a new car...at least that's what John thought she said. He was suddenly extremely lightheaded and tired. The world began to blur around him.

He vaguely remembered his parents trying to get him out of the van. Mom kept saying, "Stay with me, John!" Unfortunately, he couldn't comply, as everything faded from view.

* * *

He was in some kind of factory again...a factory that looked like it had been bombed. All around him he saw broken catwalks and twisted railings. Exposed wires showered sparks everywhere. The metal walls had huge holes punched in them. The whole place was just barely lit by a creepy purple glow, as if the all the lights had been replaced by UV lamps.

He found a huge machine in the center that looked familiar - that machine with the concentric circles. It, too, had been badly damaged by whatever happened in here. The rings were still standing, but were stripped of their metal covering. A lot of the paneling that covered the strange contraption was either crooked at best, completely torn off at worst. The big light above the rings had been smashed in; the machine's smaller lights were intact, but flickering.

The catwalk that led up to it wasn't broken, but John spotted holes in it. The railing had been torn off in places. He found himself climbing up the treacherous walkway, anyway.

As he approached the center of the mysterious machine, he heard someone coughing. When he reached the end of the catwalk, he could see a tall man with his back turned in the gloom. He knew it was Other John again, but for some reason, he was hacking and wheezing profusely.

He stepped up to the rings to get a better look at him. He was still wearing his military gear, but it was torn in places. His outer armor was missing.

"You need to be more careful, kid," Other John croaked between coughs. "You really came close to buying it today!"

"I know, I know," John replied. "But the important thing is, we know that Skynet's still around - and we found out some of stuff he's doing!"

"Your parents would have eventually found him, you know," Other John said hoarsely.

"Yeah, in another fifteen years!" John argued. "Skynet's leaving Cyberdyne, and who the hell knows where he's going? By the time they find him, it'll probably be too late!"

"Your parents know what they're doing," Other John snapped, attempting to raise his voice as best he could with his strained throat. "They can handle Skyn-" He was interrupted by a particularly nasty coughing fit that had him doubled over and cursing to himself. After a few seconds of loud choking, he finally vomited all over himself. It was hard to see in the dim light, but John could see that whatever the elder threw up, it had a reddish tinge...and had large chunks in it of looked like meat.

Other John sat there and wheezed few a few moments, occasionally stopping to spit something out. Eventually, he cleared his throat and stood back up. "...You don't want to end up like me do you?" he asked weakly.

He turned halfway to face John. All of the skin on the left side of his face had been peeled away, revealing muscle and tendons underneath. Both of his eye sockets were empty, yet John could still feel his gruesome gaze burning a hole in him.

The disturbing scene woke him up. He opened his eyes to find nothing but a beige blur. As his vision began to clear up, he found himself lying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. The "bed" was or less an examination chair with pillows on it and white sheets slipped over him. The room was small with plain beige walls. There were cabinets along one wall with a sink.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw something hovering over him to his left. He looked over to find an IV stand with a blood transfusion bag hanging from it. His eyes followed the plastic tube and saw that it was taped to his left arm, which upon further inspection, no longer had the broken handcuff around the wrist. The needle was inserted into the crook of his elbow. Now that he thought about it, he wasn't feeling cold and nauseated anymore. His shoulders and legs hurt like hell, though.

"John?! Oh, thank God you're awake!"

He looked to his right to see his mother rushing into the room. She was the only one present, however.

"Mom?" John asked, still groggy. "Where is everyone?"

"Pops in on lookout," Mom explained. "Dad is down the hall messing with an MRI machine. How are you feeling?"

"Better, I guess," John replied. "How long was I out for?"

"Not too long. Maybe about a half hour or so."

"That's good, I guess. Is this a hospital, though? Where are all the doctors?"

"Actually, this is a clinic we found that closes early on Saturdays. We can't go to a hospital; it's too dangerous."

"Uh...why? No offense to you guys, but...you're not exactly doctors."

Mom pulled up a chair, sat beside his bed, and began her long explanation. First and foremost, they needed some place "off the grid" so that Skynet could not follow them. If they went to a hospital, Skynet could easily find them either by getting into the hospital registry. Even if they all used aliases, he could still find them through their security systems. In addition, a hospital would want John to at least stay overnight. Skynet could find them in seconds and easily slip around security. In short, they'd all be sitting ducks.

Another problem was that there were tons of witnesses who watched them fleeing the spider tank, and eventually saw Dad take it out with a rocket launcher. There were also tons of cameras that recorded the whole thing. Both the media and the police probably wanted a piece of them. Even if Skynet couldn't get into any hospital's systems, all he'd have to do is follow the reporters or the cops right to them.

They came across this clinic by accident, and they were glad they did. It was small enough to be inconspicuous, but large enough to have all the right equipment to help John. Pops had managed to sneak inside, knock out the night guard, and disable the security cameras. His parents were then able to slip inside with John and start working on him. They were able to clean his wounds and find some bags of blood for a quick transfusion. It was true that none of them were doctors, but they had enough field medicine knowledge between them to patch John up until they can get a chance to take him to a real doctor - one that was away from prying eyes, both human and machine.

At that point, Dad stepped into the room. "Hey, I got the machine running," he announced. He then noticed John was awake, and his eyes went wide. "John! You're awake!" He stepped back out of the room and yelled down the hall, "Pops! John's awake!"

Dad then returned to the room and rushed over to John's side, squeezing the arm that had the IV in it. "Are you okay? Are you feeling any better?" he asked.

"Kyle, watch the needle!" Mom warned him.

Dad let go. "Uh, sorry," he said. "But you're feeling better now, right?"

"Kinda," John answered. "My legs still hurt from being broken and bitten and stuff."

" _Bitten?_ " Mom asked.

But before she could question him any further, they heard a loud crash outside in the hallway. Dad grabbed a pistol from under his jacket and peeked around the doorway. Whatever he saw...annoyed him. He rolled his eyes, put the gun away, and said to whoever was out there, "You could have asked us for change, you know!"

Moments later, Pops came in, his "clothes" changed to a white shirt with a black tie and a badge, and black pants - the uniform of the security guard he had to knock out. He was also carrying about a dozen bottles of water, which he started placing in John's bed.

"It is good to see that John Reese has regained consciousness," he said, handing the teen a bottle. "You must drink now in order to replenish your fluids."

"Uh...thanks, Pops," John replied awkwardly while taking the bottle. Apparently that noise outside was him raiding a vending machine. John opened the bottle and made sure to take at least one drink in front of Pops; he knew the old cyborg would just hound him about it until he did.

"Let's get back on topic guys," Mom ordered. "Especially the part about you getting bitten, John!"

"Uhh, yeah. One of those monster robots almost ripped my leg off!" John said, pointing to his mutilated leg.

"What 'monster robot'?" Mom asked, urgency rising in her voice. "What did it look like? Did you catch its series number?"

"It was the ones we were arguing about earlier. It was a T-3000 named Albert," John answered. He was beginning to regret it, because his parents looked horrified. Even Pops looked a little worried.

"Shit, I almost forgot about them!" Mom cried. "Godammit, not only are there more of those things, they're contagious!"

"No, Mom! Don't worry, someone told me he wasn't," John said trying to calm them down.

"John Reese is right," Pops added. "If he was infected by machine phase matter, it is safe to say he would have never even left Cyberdyne. However, it is recommended that he is put through the MRI after his transfusion is done to remove any residual nanomachines."

"Who told you that?" Dad asked John, curious.

John hesitated, knowing that Mom would probably hate the answer. But he was already in trouble, now wasn't he? "I ran into a T-1000 down there. He told me," he said.

"You ran into a _what_?!" Dad cried.

Mom threw up her hands. "Oh, this is just great!" she barked. "You could have been stabbed to death!"

"But I wasn't, because that one wasn't evil!" John argued. "In fact, he saved my life!"

Dad put his hands out trying to calm them both down. "Look, why don't we start from the beginning," he suggested. "John, why don't you tell us what happened?"

So, John started his lengthy tale about his adventure at Cyberdyne. He told them that he already knew their "overtime" was actually them going out and looking for Skynet (though he claimed it was just something he figured out; he made sure not to mention Mom's diary). That he had become concerned about their investigations, and wanted to do something to put the Skynet scare to rest. He had chosen Cyberdyne because that's where everything started. He made up the story about having to go to the library (and later, the story about going to the city for a school project), and sneaked over there by bus and by train. He described how he sneaked inside and accidentally found the basement. He came across a huge stash of plasma rifles and that spider tank that chased them, later finding out that Cyberdyne helps produce military weapons. He then ran into Al, and later Ari, two T-3000s that were made from Cyberdyne employees (again, Mom and Dad looked horrified at this). He described how they beat him up, how Al bit him and drank his blood, and how Ari broke his other leg in order to prevent him from running away. They locked him in a room with a magnetically sealed cooler that he unplugged. The T-1000 came out of that cooler, and agreed to help him for setting him free (Mom freaked out a lot at this. She kept interrupting, insisting that it couldn't be true, because the liquid cyborgs are nothing but pure evil. It took both Dad and Pops to calm her down). He told them the hot info that it told him: that Skynet was actively capturing people and trying to turn them into T-3000s, that there was at least one more out there besides the two he met, and that Skynet had mostly moved out of Cyberdyne and was branching out into other places (though he didn't get to find out where). He talked about how they activated the old model Terminators and made their daring escape. They got lucky when Ari's engine exploded, but their mood quickly became somber when Al showed up. He had been freed from Skynet's control, but now he was dying. His final act was to dissolve a door in their way (Dad looked incredibly sad about this). He told them how they made it outside, only to come face-to-face with Skynet himself. He talked about how Skynet took control of the T-900 and made the T-1000 crash by making him so angry that his emotions overloaded him ("Wish I knew about that...," muttered Mom). Finally, John talked about how Skynet was about to gleefully turn him into the next T-3000 when they all showed up to rescue him.

Both of his parents were silent for awhile, trying to digest everything John told them. They didn't look happy, but they didn't look angry at him anymore.

"We searched Cyberdyne up and down for _years!_ " Mom said angrily. "We searched it when it was still rubble! We looked when they cleared everything out! We looked when the new building went up! We found no sign of Skynet anywhere! How did he evade us?!"

"I...I don't know," Dad sighed. "This one is way sneakier than the one I knew. Maybe there was another hidden room we missed? Maybe he knew we were coming, somehow?"

"Well, we at least know he's up to the same old shit again," Mom grumbled. "He's already making his machine army."

"And he's already got advanced units, too," Dad added. "It sounds like he's had that T-1000 for awhile. He's turned three people into functional T-3000s, which is further than my Skynet got. He's even given himself a body. That thing we fought in the parking lot is almost exactly like the one the other Skynet used to attack John. The uh, first John, I mean."

"Hey, guys?" John interrupted them. "Since I told my story, why don't you tell me yours?"

"Our...story?" Mom asked. "Oh no...you don't mean-"

"Yeah, I wanna hear everything from _you_ guys from the beginning!" John said. "I might've met Skynet today, but I don't even know who he really _is_. I don't know why he's building monster robots, or why there's more than one of him. I don't know how you guys found out about him, or why you're the only ones that are fighting him. I don't know why everybody kept thinking I was the Other John. I'm not even sure what even happened to Other John other than some other Skynet turned him into a monster or something! And people keep mentioning these 'timelines,' and I don't know what the hell they're talking about!"

"No John, let's not do this," Mom groaned. "There's too much I don't wanna talk about. You wouldn't believe us if we told you, anyway."

"I dunno, Sarah," Dad said. "The cat's kinda outta the bag now."

" _No_ Kyle," Mom insisted. "It would take too long, anyway. We need to run ourselves through the MRI and get outta here before somebody finds us!"

"John Reese's blood transfusion is not finished yet," Pops piped up. "We should not move him right now. In the meantime, informing him about your history fighting Skynet would be recommended. He is a target now, so giving him information would be helpful."

Mom rubbed her temples. "Alright, fine!" she said. "But there are parts that are going to sound insane, and there are parts I'm leaving out. You've been warned!"

John's parents then began their own long story (with a few corrections by Pops). Sure enough, a lot of it actually sounded like Dad's old bedtime stories, minus a few obvious embellishments (like flying piranhas and 50-foot monsters). Both Mom and Dad were time travelers. Yes, that sounded insane. No, they couldn't prove it, not readily. Dad was from a dark future that had fortunately been stopped and overwritten. In his timeline, Skynet had nuked the planet almost forty years ago, in an event called "Judgement Day." Having more resources than the current Skynet, he created armies of robots to kill any remaining survivors. Mom came from the 1980s, where the only killer robots were toys.

As for Skynet himself, he wasn't actually a person. He was actually an artificial intelligence that had become self aware. In Dad's timeline, he started out as a military defense network. Once the programmers realized he could think for himself, they tried to turn him off. Not at all happy about this to say the very least, Skynet caused a nuclear holocaust in retaliation, creating the world that Dad lived in. The one from this timeline - the one they ran into today - was imported in from another timeline. He was always self aware, and was hidden inside the old sync app, Genisys. Once Genisys went live, he would have taken control of every computer synced with it, and would have probably tried to find a way to nuke everyone like the old Skynet did.

Over in Dad's timeline, the human resistance, led by Other John, managed to defeat his version of Skynet. But then they found out that Skynet had built a time machine, and sent a Terminator with the same make and model as Pops back to the '80s to kill Mom. Hearing this, Dad volunteered to go back in time to destroy the T-800 and save Mom. However, as Dad was hanging out in the time machine, Skynet revealed his ace in the hole. A soldier named Alex (a name John remembered seeing back at Cyberdyne) sneaked up behind John and infected him with nanomachines, turning him into one of those robot monsters.

Dad didn't see everything that happened, because he was sent back to the '80s immediately after. He wasn't in the past for five minutes before he ran into another Terminator - and one he wasn't expecting, either. A cop that came investigating the time travel disturbance turned out to be a T-1000, and not a friendly one. It tried to slice and dice Dad on the spot. Dad ran around a department store trying not to get skewered when Mom and Pops saved him. Together, they all set a trap for both the T-1000 and the T-800 from earlier and destroyed them.

This is where things got confusing, because apparently none of that was supposed to happen. According to the story Other John told Dad, Mom was supposed to be just a regular college student - she wasn't supposed to have a Guardian or any paramilitary experience. Someone else had messed with the timeline, and sent the T-1000 and Pops back to the 1970s, when Mom was just a little girl. The T-1000 had, in fact, killed John's maternal grandparents, which is why Mom had such a grudge against them. Thankfully, Pops was also there to scare the thing away and pick her up. This, along with Other John getting infected, caused Dad's timeline to be overwritten. This wasn't a terribly bad thing in John's mind, because who wants to live in a nuclear wasteland? Though it must have sucked for the people that got erased. He sincerely hoped they were reborn in this timeline somehow.

After Mom and Dad got rid of the killer robots, they traveled forward in time to the 2010s to make sure Skynet wasn't going to be built anyway. Dad had received some cryptic messages while in the first time machine about when exactly to arrive. When they got there, they found that Skynet _had_ , in fact, been built, and was a part of Genisys. The also found Other John, who helped them escape police custody. They didn't realize he was a monster robot until Pops arrived to thankfully blow his cover. He tried to convince them both to become mechanical monsters themselves, but Mom and Dad understandably refused. Refusal of transformation must have been a major insult to T-3000s, because the next thing they knew, he was trying to kill them. Fortunately, he never tried to bite them, drink their blood, or try to eat them - at least, not to their knowledge. After generally a lot of getting chased by Other John (including through police headquarters, which was probably the "rampage" described in Mom's diary), they had managed to make it to the old Cyberdyne campus. Here they had their final battle where Pops trapped the corrupted Other John inside an incomplete time machine and made it blow up. The explosion put Other John out of his misery, while also taking out Cyberdyne headquarters. Mom and Dad had thankfully managed to make it into a safe room. Meanwhile, Pops's badly mangled body had fallen into a vat of polyalloy, which fixed him up and gave him his current form.

Assuming that Skynet had been destroyed along with Cyberdyne, Mom and Dad left the city, and moved into their current home. A police officer who had helped them along the way, Detective O'Brien, managed to get their criminal records expunged. Just to be on the safe side, though, they made up a lot of aliases.

They both felt pretty bad about what happened to Other John, especially Dad. But once someone has been infected and transformed by the machine phase matter, they can't be brought back to normal; it would be like trying to bring somebody back from the dead. And the Other John was far too strong, stubborn, and relentless for them to try to find a way to deprogram him - they didn't even know it was possible until today! Nevertheless, Dad couldn't help feel that he had failed him somehow.

Even though they lived in peace for many years, the both of them couldn't shake the feeling that there was still something wrong. They didn't _see_ Skynet get destroyed, so were they sure he was actually gone? At first they just disregarded it as paranoia. But then, Skynet's favorite technologies were suddenly being mass produced. Because of this, Mom and Dad started their own investigations in their spare time. They never wanted John to find out, because they wanted him to live a normal life. They didn't want him to put up with the time-travelling killer robots like they had to. They _definitely_ did not want him meet the same fate as Other John. And, like Mom said, they didn't want him to think they were crazy.

Their investigations always turned out to be dead ends, however. As mentioned earlier, they kept an eye on Cyberdyne for years, but never found any sign of Skynet. When they visited the other companies producing his technologies, they couldn't find any trace of his presence, either physically or in the money trail. They only found him when John stumbled upon him today.

The problem now is that they were going to have to move out of their home and go into hiding somewhere else. Both parties had rediscovered each other, and now Skynet had his sights set on them. From the sound of things, they had earned Skynet's respect...which was infinitely worse than his scorn. Mom and Dad had a lot of aliases that would keep them safe, but not John; plugging his name into a search engine would easily tell someone where he lived and what school he went to. Skynet's pals might be hanging out at their house already! They were going to have to stay at a hotel tonight, preferably one out in the middle of nowhere. After that, they were going to have to pull John out of school and find another place to live.

There was more silence afterward as John tried to wrap his head around all this. He believed all the parts about Skynet and his killer robots, because he had seen them all for himself. The time travel part was a little hard to swallow, but it did explain his parents being somewhat computer illiterate; Mom would have come from a time before the Internet, and Dad would have come from a time where it was completely taken over by the old Skynet.

At that point, John's transfusion had finished. They unhooked the bag from him and placed a bandage on his arm. Then they borrowed a wheelchair to take him into the MRI room. They carefully helped him undress, then placed him on the table. He could now see the extent of his injuries. His shoulders and collar were covered in massive bruises from where Ari had grabbed him with her talons and lifted him off the floor. His shin had turned a disgusting shade of purplish-red from the bite wound. There were several arcs of holes from Al's teeth, as well as well as a few pockmarks where his upper palate should have been. It made him sick just looking at it.

They ran him through the machine. If any nanomachines came out of him, he thankfully didn't feel it. After he was finished, they helped him put his clothes back on, then put him back in the wheelchair. Pops wheeled John into another room where he began to tend to his broken legs while Mom and Dad took their turns going through the MRI. After disinfecting the bite wound again (which was quite painful), he managed to find some stiff plastic strips to serve as splints, then wrapped up both legs in a lot of gauze.

"This will only be temporary," the old cyborg assured him. "Once we are certain that we are not being pursued, we will take you to a physician for a proper cast."

"Thanks, Pops," John said, "but how are you gonna check yourself for that phase matter shit? I saw Skynet infect your gun, earlier. And I know you can't just hop in the MRI like we can."

"My systems can detect the presence of foreign nanomachines," Pops explained. "So far, they have not found any invading machine phase matter."

"Okay, that's good" John said as he remembered what the T-1000 told him - that he would have been quickly and easily consumed by phase matter. It made his skin crawl, as there wasn't much difference between Pops and a T-1000. John then remembered something else the liquid creature had told him, and decided to ask about it. "Say, Pops...if you had some phase matter that wasn't part of another Terminator, could you upgrade yourself with it?"

Pops looked into the distance for a moment, as if he was thinking it over. "It is possible," he answered. "There may be some compatibility issues to overcome, but it is possible. But it would not be recommended. There would be some extreme risks associated with converting my body into phase matter."

"Like what...?" John asked.

Pops became rather quiet, and looked away. It was as if he didn't want to answer that question. John was about to prod him for an answer when Mom and Dad entered the room. They had finished picking themselves clean of nanomachines, and now they wanted to get out of this place before anyone came looking.

They began to wheel John out to the parking lot, stopping only to swipe some heavy-duty painkillers from the pharmacy. They took him outside to a new van they had swiped after he had passed out from shock. They carefully laid him down in the back seat, before Mom climbed into the front passenger seat, and Dad kept watch in the back space. With a creepy slurping noise, Pops turned silver and changed his clothes back before taking the wheel. They then drove off, taking the shortest route out of the city possible. Hopefully, they wouldn't be chased by any tanks this time.

* * *

Much to everyone's relief, no one followed them. They drove a few hours into countryside before stopping at at motel in a one-horse town. Just to be on the safe side, they let Pops do the checking in. Surely their earlier escapes were all over the news by now, and there was a good chance their faces might be too. They didn't want to risk getting recognized by the hotel's personnel. Might as well send in someone who could change his face at any time.

Pops turned himself into an unfamiliar balding man with that same uniform on. John figured this form was probably the unlucky security guard from the clinic. Pops then left the van and stepped into the hotel lobby. John and his family sat around in silence, looking out for any suspicious characters. The pain in John's legs had dulled thanks to the painkillers they picked up.

It wasn't long before Pops came back with the key. He had managed to get a ground floor room right by where they parked, for an easy getaway if they needed it. Mom and Dad carried John into the room, placing him on one of the small beds. In the morning, they planned on stopping somewhere to grab him some crutches. For now, they needed to rest.

The motel room was small, but thankfully not too seedy looking. There were two beds, though they were pretty small. The walls were plain white, but thankfully no cracks, mold spots, or water damage that he could see. There was a long, low dresser against one wall with had a small TV on it. There was a single chair and lamp in one corner. The sink was outside the bathroom. The orange-brown carpeting was absolutely ancient and the only really decrepit thing in here.

Mom and Dad tried to make themselves comfortable on the other small bed, while Pops stood lookout by the window, a rifle in his hand. Someone turned on the TV. Sure enough, the spider tank incident was practically on every station. The footage mostly showed the police chasing the rogue tank, and it opening fire onto traffic. When it was run over by the train, the police helicopters followed it down the tracks instead of focusing on them. When the cops finally caught up to it, they found that there was no driver inside. It was being controlled remotely, but by who, they had no idea. John and his family, of course, knew exactly who did it.

This did not, however, mean that they were off the hook. There was still some blurry videos taken by onlooker phones cameras of Dad shooting down the tank, and the rest of them vacating the downed van. The quality was poor, so it was hard to make out their features. Since the police had quickly determined that the tank was property of Cyberdyne, certain channels were also broadcasting security camera footage of John's break-in of said company's offices that morning. But thanks to his use of the flashlight, all the videos showed was his lower half. Still, they knew forensic labs may be able to enhance those videos and create clear pictures of them; it wouldn't be long before they would be branded as suspects. They would have to steer clear of the cops as well as machines.

They did receive some relief from the most unexpected places. When investigators arrived at the Cyberdyne offices to inspect the basement (as it was not only the place where the tank had been stored, but also the site of the earlier explosion), they found absolutely nothing. No shrapnel, no robot parts, no nothing. The only thing vaguely suspicious that they found were a few scorch marks and a hole in one wall. Nothing was down there that wasn't supposed to be down there.

The authorities were baffled, but John knew what happened; Skynet scrubbed the place down. After all, if the cops found evidence, they could very well trace it back to one or more of his fake employee IDs. Skynet probably wanted the attention of the police much less than John's family did; no one was supposed to know he even existed. Maybe that's why he sent the tank after them instead of trying to chase them down himself.

On the TV right now was a middle-aged, dark skinned man making a statement about the tank fiasco. John recognized him from Cyberdyne's website - he was Danny Dyson, the CEO of Cyberdyne. The captions at the bottom of the screen confirmed this. No doubt he was trying to defend his company from the fallout of today's disaster. John didn't blame him too much; it's not like he would know that a malevolent AI was secretly taking advantage of him, and usurping his technology behind his back.

He wasn't sure why, but John kind of liked this guy. He felt like he knew him from somewhere before. Not just saw him, but _knew_ him. It was that damn deja vu again.

The TV started to get blurry as John found himself falling asleep. He really didn't want to; not only might Skynet be sneaking around, still looking for him and his family, but he didn't want to have another dream about that gross, zombified Other John yelling at him to mind his own business. He didn't have much choice in the matter, however, as his eyelids became to heavy to keep open, and slowly slipped into sleep.

Thank goodness he didn't have any dreams that night.

* * *

It was a few days later, and John found himself in his room, packing all of his stuff away.

His parents had bought him some crutches and managed to eventually find a doctor in a far-off suburb to treat his broken legs and put casts on them. She was a little baffled as to what caused the bizarre-looking wound, but Mom just said it was a bear trap. The doctor was a middle-aged lady with red hair that was going grey. John found he kind of liked her, too.

Today, they had decided to move out of the house and try to find a new place. Mom had suggested one of the towns around the area where her family used to go on vacation. It was far away from any prying eyes, and she still knew the area pretty well. Just as long as they stayed away from the actual town she used to go to; Skynet might be peeking around there, and besides, it brought back a lot of bad memories.

His parents had already transferred out of his old school. He kind of wished he could say goodbye to his friends, but doing so might put them in harm's way. When they reached the house, they circled around several times to make sure no sketchy characters were hanging around the place. Pops also gave the house - and the surrounding area - a thorough scanning to make sure there was nobody hiding inside.

John was largely packing up the stuff he could easily reach and pick up. Complicated stuff like hanging clothes in his closet, or other things he couldn't lean on his crutches for, he was skipping over until somebody could come in and help.

As he was taking stuff out of the bottom of his closet, he suddenly saw two old toys that he thought he had gotten rid of a long time ago: the figure of the blonde catgirl and the old ostrich plush. He shivered, remembering who they used to represent when he played with them as a little boy. Things were a lot better when he was only five; Skynet was just another cartoon villain, and the skinless monster was just a dumb beast.

He sighed as he sat on the bed. This was all his fault. If he hadn't gone poking into Cyberdyne, he would have never run into Skynet. He wouldn't have got his legs broken. His family wouldn't have to move out.

Then again, if he did nothing, his parents would have kept up their investigations. They may have eventually run into Skynet themselves, and then they'd all be in the exact same situation as they were now - if they were lucky! If they didn't find him, Skynet would be continuing his secret projects undisturbed. At the very least, he'd continue to kidnap live people and turn them into monster cyborgs. Al and Ari would have continued to terrorize the neighborhood around Cyberdyne. At the very worst, Skynet might have eventually been able to break into the military defense systems and cause his own "Judgement Day."

Who really knew? John tossed the two toys in a suitcase. Maybe he could give them to the little kids across the street, or something. For him, they brought back bad memories.


	7. The Core

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 7: The Core**

John Reese was twenty years old.

His broken legs eventually healed well enough, though his one shin would always have pockmark scars up and down it from the bite. He saw it as a reminder of what he was up against. If anybody asked him about what gave him such strange-looking scars, he'd tell them that he got bitten by a shark while out surfing. It sounded cool enough and usually worked.

His family had moved deeper into the countryside as Mom had planned. They now lived in an extremely small, sparsely populated town where their nearest neighbors were several blocks away. John was worried that this isolation would make it very hard to call for help if they were in trouble, but Mom insisted they were better off this way. They _couldn't_ call anyone for help; if they did, they'd be sentencing their would-be helpers to death. Besides, they had enough weapons and training to take on Skynet and his minions, and had several escape plans if they couldn't.

His parents found a new high school to enroll him in under the alias "John Baum," and he was able to graduate three years later. His family was quite proud; Mom never got to go to school much because she was always on the run, and formal schooling didn't exist at all in Dad's world.

Once he finished high school, John was inducted into the "family business" of hunting down Skynet. Mom was still reluctant about it, because she still thought that this shouldn't be John's fight. But he was now an adult, and he had already been a target for three years. She eventually relented after some prodding from Dad and Pops. The both of them were eager to have John on the team, particularly Dad. John highly suspected Dad's eagerness most likely had something to do with his old fallen friend, but he decided it was best not to say anything about it.

Even before he was an official member, he had to learn the various methods of hiding his true identity. Living completely off the grid like his parents used to do was not something he found feasible; everything was online, and besides, he just couldn't go without the Internet. So instead, he learned how to whip up lots of different aliases for the different facets of his life. If those aspects (like a bank account) needed an ID, his parents could make a new one for him. As for online activities, John had already been using an anonymity network to conceal his IP address for certain...shadier browsing, but now he had to use it all the time. He did have to give up his old social media accounts, however, as they all had his real name. He felt terrible for having to abandon his old friends, but if he didn't, they might become targets.

It must have been somewhat effective, because Skynet never came after them since the Cyberdyne incident. Mom and Dad were so certain that there would be waves upon waves of killer robots hunting them down, but no one showed up. They found no shady characters or strange animals hanging around the neighborhood. Nobody tried to attack them in public, nor did any strange cars ever follow them home.

John wondered if they were really that good at lying low, or if Skynet wasn't coming after them for some other reason. Laziness? No...Skynet had built a small army of highly-advanced cyborgs all while keeping up the illusion that he had been destroyed; that didn't sound very lazy. Did he run out of resources? Probably not...John was told that Skynet was in the process of moving out of Cyberdyne. He probably had other lairs set up elsewhere. Besides, John had trouble believing he couldn't find another place to build his troops. He just hoped it wasn't because Skynet had some sort of horrible trap laid out for them. Dad _had_ said that this Skynet was sneakier and more patient than the one he knew...

John's family, however, was taking the opposite approach; their current mission was to hunt down Skynet's core and shut it down. He was briefed on this once he became part of "The Resistance," as Dad liked to call it. According to Dad, Skynet's main CPU was housed in some massive server, and the creepy cyborg they all encountered in Cyberdyne's parking lot was just an avatar. They could not rest until this core was found and destroyed, as Skynet would inevitably try to break into the military's missile systems and cause another Judgement Day.

John found himself questioning that motive. How hard was it for a sapient AI to break into a government system, especially one that had a body that could turn into anyone or anything? Couldn't he just pretend to be a military official and sneak in there somehow? Shouldn't a new Judgement Day have happened years ago? Once again, John found himself coming to a conclusion he didn't like: maybe Skynet had something far more sinister in store for the human race, and it was just taking awhile to get things set up. In the seventeen years that his family thought he was destroyed, he had managed to build his own troops from scratch, start experimenting on humans, and build himself a body that could teleport and infect people. Who knew what he had been up to in the last five years? Of course, that made finding his core and dismantling it even more important!

But the tricky part was finding it. Weeks after the disaster at Cyberdyne, Mom and Pops sneaked back into the office building and tried to see if Skynet had left anything behind. They did find a huge underground storage room that, according to Pops, was built after original building was finished. It was still older than this current building, so it had to have survived the Genisys incident somehow. It would have probably been large enough to store Skynet's core, but alas, nothing was down there except paperwork archives. There was no trace of the fiendish AI at all at the office, and even his Alex persona was gone (employment records showed he had quit a few weeks after John's adventure). They later investigated Cyberdyne's other offices and labs, but there was no evidence of Skynet's presence there either, nor any of his servants.

To complicate their search even further, it seemed that every research lab, whether private or public, was into nanotechnology these days. It would take them years, if not decades, to sort through them all and find out which ones, if any, were getting their technology from Skynet. John figured their nemesis probably planned it that way; if he gave his technology to tons of different human labs instead of just keeping it all in one place, he'd be much tougher to find. In addition, he'd have entire industries unwittingly producing his armies of killer robots and infectious nanomachines for him.

John's family decided to narrow their search down based on a few criteria. First, it had to be nanomachines; nanotechnology that did not involve microscopic machines was thrown out. Second, the nanomachines had to resemble Skynet's shapeshifting technology. Things like claytronics and other forms of programmable matter were placed at the top of the list. Finally, nanomachines that were either going to be injected into the human body or potentially used as weapons were given the highest priority.

Once they had an attack plan, they showed John the ropes of their investigation process. Mom organized their cases into three categories based on how dangerous they were. Danger was defined by how well-guarded the place was, and how likely they were going to encounter Skynet or one of his minions. For the easiest missions, two of them would go and investigate while the other two would stay home and keep watch over the house. Only light weapons were taken, if needed. For moderately tough missions, they would all travel to the site, but only two of them would arm themselves and do any investigating. The other two would remain close by in case backup was needed. For the most dangerous cases, all four of them would arm themselves heavily and investigate together.

At first, John was only allowed on easy missions, and Mom insisted on going with him. He had a feeling she wanted to keep a close watch on him. Eventually, she loosened up and allowed him to go with Dad sometimes. She also took him on a couple of more dangerous missions when she needed his computer skills.

During their investigations, the first thing they would check for is if the lab created their own nanomachines, or bought them from somewhere else. If they were bought, John's parents would make a note to check out the place they were purchased from next and make sure it was a legit business. If the nanomachines were created from scratch in the lab, they would immediately go down there and search it. They'd check for any suspicious characters that worked or visited there, and search every nook and cranny for hidden rooms that might have something valuable. They'd look through everyone's paperwork and databases. Any place that was labeled as a restricted area was immediately broken into and searched.

While looking through employee rosters for sketchy characters, John often found himself looking for anyone that resembled that T-900 that helped him escape that fateful day. He also went looking into large containers to make sure they weren't hiding any liquid metal cyborgs inside. He never found either one of his old friends, unfortunately. He didn't want to give up, though; he really wanted to save them from Skynet, like they saved him. He just hoped he could actually do it if he found them - Skynet took control of the girl a long time ago, and no doubt he reprogrammed the T-1000 by now.

John also found himself occasionally having to stop Mom and Dad from trying to vandalize or flat out destroy the nanomachines. He once caught Mom trying to break open a sealed container of them in order to dump acid inside it, and caught Dad several times trying to do the same, only wanting to expose them to magnets instead. John could understand why they wanted to do it; besides Pops, all other intelligent machines tried to kill them or worse. Nanomachines were a special kind of evil to them, given what happened to Other John. But despite his parents' excuse, John believed that destroying them out of spite was still wrong (and not just because it was vandalism). Nanotechnology was just another tool - it wasn't inherently evil. But because telling them that these things were not under Skynet's control and could still be used for the common good tended to fall on deaf ears, he instead warned them that damaging them could cause them to replicate out of control. Fear of a potential grey goo scenario quickly convinced them to stop. It was a good thing they didn't know that such scenarios were extremely unlikely, if not impossible.

The investigation process continued on like this for a couple years. It took up almost all of John's time, as they were constantly travelling around, sometimes going to the far corners of the country, sometimes even visiting other nations with fabricated passports. Consequently, John did not have time to apply to a college or university. It was probably for the best - the nearest four-year college was too far away for him to commute. He would have had to give up his search and move into a dorm. And if Skynet managed to find him, he'd be putting the whole school in danger. Instead, John took a few classes here and there at a local community college. They were all programming classes, as he wanted to learn some new skills to use against his mechanical foes.

Unfortunately, their long search did not yield any definitive results. Almost everything led to a dead end. Every time they'd find something suspicious, it always turned out to be just good old fashioned human dishonesty (kickbacks, illegal reagents, fabricating experimental results, etc). It seemed that Skynet was just as good at hiding as they were. They took a week off as Mom reorganized their search list to figure out where to go next. They were considering investigating nanotechnology labs that didn't involve nanorobotics, just in case. John briefly thought about forcing Skynet into the open by somehow setting himself up as bait. He quickly disregarded it as a stupid idea; it was too dangerous, and his family would never allow it. Hell, they'd have a conniption fit just knowing he thought about it!

Then one night, they had a breakthrough...or at least they thought they did.

John and his dad were combing through the paperwork in the offices of a university lab. Among other things, they had found an incomplete journal article on the lab's most recent results. The article described their nanomachines as a "generous gift," meaning they ordered it from somewhere else. But the gift-giver's name is what piqued their interest: Dr. Alexander Murphy. John could still remember the name on the office door back in Cyberdyne that Skynet had used: "Alex M." Dad also noted that the Skynet avatar from his world also went by the alias of "Alex." It was a pretty big stretch - how many guys out there were named "Alex" and had a surname that started with "M"? - but it was better than nothing.

According to the article, "Dr. Alex" worked in a private lab over in Colorado Springs. This got Dad excited, because the Skynet he knew used to have its core stationed in the Cheyenne Mountain Complex...which was very close to the aforementioned city. It could still turn out to be one big coincidence, but after years of finding nothing, they were all desperate for a lead.

After they searched the rest of the lab for anything else that might be interesting (and discovering that there really wasn't), John made a copy of the article, and they returned home to report their findings to Mom and Pops. Mom also thought that their discovery was a bit vague, but they were running out of options.

Since the lab was pretty far, they took a weekend off and all went down there together. But because they still weren't sure about this lead being legit, only two of them were going to go check out the lab. They still packed a lot of weapons, just in case something was down there waiting for them. Among these weapons was a homemade electromagnet the size of a trunk and powered by a car battery. There was still at least one T-3000 out there somewhere (and they really hoped it was still only one), and they wanted to be prepared in case she showed up. The magnet was by no means capable of destroying one of those things, but it would provide a distraction long enough for them to escape. They also packed a pair of industrial acid sprayers filled with the juice of more car batteries. Some of Skynet's minions still had polyalloy skin, and the acid would eat right through it as well as their endoskeletons. It might damage the resin of something made out of phase matter, too. This bothered John; what if he ran into one of his old friends and one of his family members tried to corrode them to death? He decided to push it aside - nobody was sure if this wasn't just another dead end anyway.

* * *

"...You sure we've got the right place?"

John and his dad were standing around the parking lot of a vacant-looking one-story office building. They had made it to Colorado Springs and followed the address in the journal article to an industrial park. They found the place nestled in the corner of an intersection next to a paint manufacturer. If it hadn't been for the address posted on the front of the building, they would have missed it entirely - it looked completely abandoned. The grass had grown tall, and there was no sign on the lawn that described this place. There were no cars in the parking lot, and it didn't look like there were any lights on inside. When they first came across it, Dad actually decided to circle the block again, just in case they had missed something.

John checked the address again, just to be sure. The numbers on the paper and the ones nailed to the front door still matched. In addition to that, there were no For Sale signs on the lawn, meaning that this place wasn't completely abandoned.

"Yeah, this is it," he said.

"Damn, I hope they didn't put the wrong address on that thing," Dad said. "Might as well check anyway, since we're here."

They got back inside Dad's rental car and parked it as close as possible to the door in case they needed to make a fast getaway. Then they rummaged through the trunk, where they had packed half of their weapons stash (the other half was in Pops's truck back at the hotel). Dad took a shotgun and one of the acid sprayers. John packed a few handguns and lugged the electromagnet out - he had a feeling he was going to need it.

"I hope this ain't a trap," John heard Dad mutter to himself.

The door was electronically locked. John could easily unlock it with his latest smartphone with an updated unlocking app, but Dad wanted to do it instead. In the past couple of years, Dad was wanting to learn how to use all this newfangled technology that didn't exist in his own timeline. John supposed it couldn't hurt; having more computer-savvy people was a plus against technological enemies. He just wished he'd learn a bit faster. It took Dad a few minutes to figure out how to bring up the unlocking app on his own smartphone. John was tempted to do it for him, but Dad insisted he do the honors.

Dad eventually got the app working and unlocked the door. They stepped into the dark, deserted lobby. The place was completely bare. There were no decorations on the walls or anywhere else, not even a single potted plant. There were no couches, chairs, shelves, or tables. The windows didn't have curtains or blinds. There was a receptionist's desk against one wall, but nobody was sitting at it. There was nothing on it nor in it. It was probably only there because it came with the building. All of the lights were off. This place reminded John of "Alex's" barren office back in Cyberdyne. He guessed that an AI really wouldn't see a point in interior decorating.

Dad flipped on the lights. A single bare bulb came on above them, providing some light in this eerie setting. Across from them was a doorway leading to a dark hallway by the empty desk. With nowhere else to go, they started their search there. The hallway branched off into many different rooms and had an elevator at the opposite end.

They left their heavier weapons back in the lobby as they cautiously made their way into the hall. They decided to split up the sides of the hall between them to make things faster. As John went to open the first door, he realized that he accidentally left his new lockpick kit back at the hotel. Thankfully, he didn't need it, as all of the doors were unlocked. The both of them kept a finger on their weapons as they peered into each room - all of which seemed to be completely empty. This was a dead end, wasn't it?

John carefully nudged open the last room on his side of the hall, and flipped the light switch on as quick as he could. He almost jumped out of his skin when he saw somebody standing around in there. It was a teenage girl with long brown hair and a blank look on her face. It was _her_...the T-900 that tried to help him escape!

"It's...it's you!" John blurted out.

"Huh?" Dad, who had looking in the room across from John's, stepped out into the hall, curious as to who his son was talking to.

John immediately remembered that the last time he saw her, Skynet had reprogrammed her to capture him. He barely had enough time to react when the girl raised her right arm at him. There was a squishing noise as her polyalloy hand receded, revealing the barrel of some sort of gun underneath. There was a humming noise, and the barrel began to glow purple.

" _Look out, John!_ " Dad screamed. He shoved John out of the doorway and against the elevator door. The bright purple beam singed the back of Dad's coat and splintered the door of room behind them.

Dad turned around and fired a few rounds at the girl, who immediately appeared in the doorway. Silver holes opened up in her body where the bullets went in, but quickly closed. The both of them jumped away from the elevator door as she fired another beam at their legs, which burned the metal doors behind them.

"Shit, I think it's a TX!" Dad cursed.

"She's a T-900," John corrected him.

"Well whatever the fuck she is, I hope she doesn't have a flamethrower!" Dad replied. "We gotta get outta here and call your mom for backup! These things are hard as hell to kill!"

John really didn't want to "kill" her, but he held his tongue. Not just because this wasn't a good time to argue, but a wayward beam might burn his tongue out!

They attempted to run back to the lobby, but found themselves constantly diving into the side rooms in an effort to dodge the plasma shots in the cramped hallway. She would sometimes follow one of them into the rooms and open fire, and the other would have to distract her by shooting back. She quickly learned their tactics, and once they were back in the hall, she fired at the areas they were about to jump to. John's pant legs got burned this way.

It was then that he realized that she had only been firing at their legs, rather than their heads or chests. And she was firing at low power, too; if that plasma beam had been at full power, his leg would have been burned off! She wasn't trying to kill them, but why?

The two humans dived back into the lobby and plastered themselves against the wall as another plasma beam flew past them, singing the floor tiles. Dad leaped forward and grabbed the acid sprayer that he had left behind. John wasn't thrilled with the idea of Dad hosing the girl down with acid, but right at the moment they didn't have a choice.

Or did they? John spied his magnet on the floor and immediately got an idea. He leaped forward and grabbed it. No sooner did he do so, than he heard his Dad let out a scream. The T-900 had shot one of his hands, causing him to drop the sprayer.

John immediately turned the electromagnet on and shoved it her way. Its powerful pull caught the girl off guard, and she fell to the floor. She was dragged over to the magnet, where her polyalloy skin began to slip off and pool around it. It revealed her creepy silver and red endoskeleton underneath.

"Dad, are you okay?!" John yelled over to his father, once the girl was (partially) subdued.

"Yeah, I'm okay!" Dad replied. "Just a little burnt. I've taken worse hits than this. Either she's got a bad blaster, or she's keeping it on low power, for some reason." He grabbed the sprayer with his good hand. "I'll take it from here!"

"Wait a sec, Dad," John said. "I got a better idea!"

Dad kept his hand on the sprayer. "Like what?" he asked, giving John a confused look.

The hard part came next. He recalled from Dad's old stories that almost every Terminator (save for the ones with no skeleton) carried their CPU in a chip deep inside their skulls. The chip could be accessed by a port on the side of their heads. Taking the chip out would not only deactivate the Terminator, but also give the remover access to the cyborg's CPU. That person would then free to reprogram it as they saw fit. According to Dad, a lot of humans reprogrammed Terminators this way.

Of course, what made it so hard was that any Terminator was not going to lie idly by as some human tried to help themselves to its CPU. Even now, the T-900 struggled against the pull of the powerful magnet, shooting holes in the ceiling with her gun arm while trying to grab him with her empty hand. She was glaring daggers at him with exposed, glowing red optics. Some of the polyalloy had thankfully oozed off her head. He pushed away more of the metallic slime and found a few circular coverings in an indentation on her temple. Could her chip be in one of those?

He cautiously reached over to the struggling machine and tried to press on them, pull on them, or unscrew them. He started to wish he had remembered to bring his lockpicking set; he might have been able to pry them open. Finally, he tried grabbing onto and twisting a large round cover on the top of her exposed skull. It moved, and popped up! But just as John was about to pull it out, he heard the girl fire off a particularly loud plasma round, and a blast of searing heat burned his left cheek. He looked up and saw, to his horror, that the T-900 managed to angle her arm so that it was now pointing directly at his face! The barrel began to glow again and hum ominously...

"Oh, no you don't!" Dad leaped and grabbed the girl's arm, pointing it away from John's head. He struggled to keep her arm still, which was no easy task with a burnt hand and arm.

"I don't know what you're doing, John, but do it quick!" he shouted.

John pulled the cover off the T-900's skull revealing a deep hole. He reached inside and felt around, hoping his hand wasn't going to get stuck in the cramped port. His fingers brushed up against something small that he thought he could grab on to. But no sooner did he make his discovery, then the magnet stopped humming. John looked down to see that her polyalloy had completely coated the side of magnet and managed to turn its switch off. Dad was immediately flung across the room. He slammed shoulder-first onto the ground, slid across the floor, and bumped his head on a wall. As for John, she grabbed him by the ankle with her vice-like grip, threatening to break it. What was it with Skynet's minions that they wanted to break his legs so much? Never mind, he didn't want to know!

Trying not to panic, he quickly fumbled around inside her port again, trying to find that small object from before. As he did so, she reformed her other hand and grabbed his arm with almost enough force to snap his wrist. He let out a gurgling cry and his fingers clenched in pain. As they did so, he felt the small thing from before with his fingertips! He grabbed on to it just as she forcefully yanked his hand out of her head.

The second she did so, there was the noise of an engine powering down, and she fell to the floor. Her arms went limp, releasing her painful iron grip on John's ankle and arm. Her glowing red eyes faded to black. What polyalloy skin she had left on her began to slide off her endoskeleton, pooling around her body.

John looked at his hand. In it was some sort of small rectangular block with tiny squares etched on it - it almost resembled a metal candy bar. By sheer dumb luck, his grip had been strong enough so that when the girl pulled his hand out, it took her chip with it.

"John!"

John found himself nearly tackled to the ground by his worried dad.

"John, are you okay?!" Dad cried. "The bitch didn't break anything, did she?"

"Naw Dad, I'm fine," John reassured him. He had some objections to Dad calling the machine that once helped get him out of Cyberdyne alive a "bitch," but now was not the time. "I think she just bruised me. What about you? You got thrown!"

"I'll be okay," Dad answered. "I've been thrown around dozens of times!" John noticed that Dad was rubbing the shoulder he landed on, despite his words. He also was trying not to move his burnt hand, which was understandable, because it looked awful. It was bright red and appeared to have blisters on it.

"I gotta ask, though...how did you do that?" Dad gestured to the deactivated T-900 next to them. Her stillness and exposed exoskeleton made her look like a Halloween decoration, or something that belonged in a medical school class.

John showed Dad the chip. "I remembered you said that they carry their CPU inside their heads," he said.

Dad laughed. "You got a good memory, kid!" he said. "But y'know, you kinda did things the hard way. It woulda been a lot easier if you just let me dump acid on her."

"Well, uh...no...," John stammered, trying to think of a good excuse. He still wasn't sure if Dad was going to approve of him taking the chip home and reprogramming her. "Because...maybe we can use her to help track down Skynet, if it turns out he's not here!"

Dad looked thoughtful. "You think we could do that?" he asked. "Ah, we'll find out later. Anyway, I better call your mom about this. If there's at least one of these things around here, there's bound to be more. We're gonna need backup!"

Dad took out his phone and and slowly dialed Mom's number with his burnt fingers. In the meantime, John put the chip in his jacket pocket for safe keeping later. He'd have try to reprogram her later...if it was even possible. At the very least, maybe he could get a good look at Skynet's coding. He wondered what to do about her chasis, though. No way his parents would let him take it home with him! Maybe he could find a new body for her later?

He realized he was thinking too far in advance again and stopped himself. They first needed to find out if Skynet was even hiding anything here.

* * *

"You are lucky, John Reese. If the T-900 had its plasma rifle at full power, it would have melted all the tissues off of your cheek."

"Thanks for the image, Pops. You really know how to paint a picture!"

John, both of his parents, and Pops were currently standing in the parking lot of the office building. After calling Mom, Dad and John decided to wait outside, just in case the T-900 had any friends lurking around inside. Thankfully, nothing happened, and Mom arrived shortly with Pops in tow. They were currently tending to John and his dad's wounds. Pops was applying some burn cream on the spot on John's cheek where the T-900 had nicked him with her plasma gun. His wrist and ankle developed large, dark bruises, but fortunately had not been broken. Dad, on the other hand, had second degree burns on his hand, and may have dislocated his shoulder. He was currently arguing with Mom over whether or not he should continue the investigation with the rest of them. Mom insisted that he wait outside with the cars, but Dad kept telling her how he had suffered worse wounds before - broken bones, even - but kept on fighting.

Once Pops determined that John's face had a sufficient amount of ointment on it, he put the medicine back in his truck and returned to his spot beside John. "Now we must wait for your parents to finish their debate so that we may plan our next move," he explained.

"Debate." That was an overly-nice way of putting it. He watched his parents bicker for a few minutes before his eyes wandered back to the Guardian, who was patiently standing by. An idea suddenly struck him. Of course! Pops would be strong enough to do it!

"Hey Pops, do you think you could help me with something?" he asked.

"What is it, John Reese?" Pops asked.

"I need you to help me carry something out to the car," John explained. "It's back inside the lobby."

"It may not be wise for only two of us to go inside the building," Pops warned. "Other Skynet units may have been alerted to our presence by the T-900 and may have already began to mobilize. Also, your parents are almost finished with their debate."

John looked over to see Mom trying to fight back tears, and Dad giving her a hug. She returned his embrace and he started kissing her on her head. John quickly looked away, not wanting to see a possible make out session.

"I think they're gonna be there for awhile, Pops," John said. "Besides, it will only take us a minute. If you're worried about something waiting for us in there, you could always scan the place. There's not much to the building - just a lobby and some small rooms!"

Pops stared into space, no doubt calculating John's words. "Scanning the building for Skynet activity is something that must be done, regardless," he said. "As long as no Skynet units are found inside the building, I will help fulfill your request. However, if Skynet activity is detected-"

"...We won't do anything and wait for my parents. Right, got it," John finished. "That's the spirit Pops! The front door is right this way - we've already got it unlocked."

John and Pops walked across the parking lot and into the unkempt front lawn. Pops suddenly stopped and glared intensely at the office, scanning for any robots or cyborgs.

"No Skynet activity found on this level," he said after a few minutes. "The only anomalous object is a non-functional T-900. We may enter."

John led the old cyborg inside, and then right up to the deactivated endoskeleton. It was still lying on the floor in a puddle of its own polyalloy.

"This is the thing that attacked us," John explained. "Dad thought it was a TX at first, I think because it had that plasma beam."

Pops squatted down and lifted the endoskeleton's gun arm and began to study it carefully. "Negative," he answered without looking up. "This is simply a modified T-900. The X series has a differently shaped endoskeleton and has more onboard weapons."

Suddenly, the fingers on Pops's right hand turned silver and reshaped themselves into screwdriver or wrench-like tools. He quickly began to undo the bolts on the T-900's elbow.

"Hey! Pops, what're you doing?!" John cried, worried that the Guardian was going to disassemble her right then and there.

With a quick jerk, Pops managed to completely remove the T-900's forearm. "This plasma gun is compatible with my systems," he explained, standing back up. "Since you have already removed the T-900's CPU, it should not contain any of Skynet's programming. If any viruses exist in the gun's systems as a failsafe, they would have been deactivated upon the removal of the chip, and my own systems can delete them."

There was a soft churning noise as Pops shoved the gun into his forearm. His arm rippled and bulged in places, and his fingers curled in odd directions (one of the curled up backward). He stared off into space for a moment, most likely installing the thing. A moment later, he retracted his hand, and fired a bright purple beam at the floor. John felt a wave of heat as the beam easily burned right through the tiles.

"The T-900 did indeed have its weapon on the lowest strength," Pops told John. "Most likely, it did so to-"

"Capture me and Dad," John said, cutting him off. "That's...that's what I thought." He knew that the second he realized the girl was shooting at their legs and not their heads. And he knew why, too...

"Do you want me to remove this exoskeleton so that we may dispose of it?" Pops asked.

"Well, I _do_ need you to help carry it out to the car," John answered. "But don't dispose of it. I need it."

Pops raised an eyebrow - it was the closest he could come to an "are you crazy?" stare. "It would be dangerous to take it with us," he said. "Skynet has probably installed GPS tracking on all of his servants.

"Okay, good catch," John replied. He reached in his pocket for his phone. "Give me a minute, and I'll try to uninstall it."

"If you wish to take it home to reprogram it, John Reese, your parents will not approve," Pops gave the young man a glare of disapproval of his own.

"But I _have_ to learn sometime, right?" John protested. "Dad told me the Other John used to do it all the time. It helped win them a lot of battles!"

"I would not suggest idolizing John Connor," Pops warned him. "He eventually met with a terrible fate."

John found himself hesitating. Yes, what happened to Other John was horrible, but...it had nothing to do with reprogramming Terminators, right? Wait...was Pops getting... _jealous_? Well, whether he was capable of jealousy or not didn't matter, because John was bound and determined to repay the girl for saving him so long ago. But just as he was looking through his apps for something that could possibly disable a GPS signal, a familiar voice said, "There you are!"

John looked up to see his parents walking in the door, both heavily armed. Among other things, Dad was wheeling both acid sprayers in, and Mom had a plasma rifle strapped to her back - something she lifted from her last trip to Cyberdyne.

"Dammit, you guys, don't wander off like that!" she scolded them. "Especially not at a time like this! We almost thought you got captured!"

"Sorry, Mom," John said. "We were just...getting a new weapon for Pops!" He gestured to the T-900's lack of a plasma gun.

Mom glared angrily at the lifeless endoskeleton in the floor. "This the thing that attacked you?" she asked.

"Yep, sure is," Dad answered her. "That's the thing that burned my hand and tried to burn off John's face! Just with a little less skin."

Mom started to head for the door. "Wait right here, and I'll get the acid. We can't leave this thing lying around."

"No, wait!" John protested, following her. "Don't do it!"

Mom whirled back around and impatiently snapped, "Why not?!"

John backed down. "Because, um..."

Thankfully, Dad intervened. "John says he wants to take it apart and see if he can't try to pinpoint Skynet's location with it. Something like that, right?"

But just as John was about to thank Dad, Pops intervened this time. "In addition, John Reese wishes to reprogram the T-900."

"What?!" Mom barked.

"POPS!" John squawked. Did all cyborgs come with big mouths?! If Pops wasn't family, John could have just slugged him. That, and he knew that if he actually did it, he'd probably just break his fingers.

Dad seemed surprised at first, then amused. "Is _that_ why wanted the chip so bad?" he asked. "John, you realize she's not a real girl, right?"

"Of course I do!" John snapped, embarrassed. "It's just that...she's the one that helped me escape Cyberdyne five years ago. I have to pay her back somehow...she's my friend!"

"She's not your-!" Mom started rubbing her face in an exasperated manner. "Look, John...I understand that you wanna help her, but now's not the time," she said, trying to stay calm. "Also, I'm pretty sure Skynet already knows you're attached to her, and sent her here to get to you. She's probably got a bomb or a tracking device somewhere on her!"

"And we don't even know if she's the same one that helped you out," Dad added. "My Skynet used to mass produce these things. It ain't much of a stretch to assume this one could've made a whole bunch of her just to mess with you."

John glanced sadly at the endoskeleton. "Alright, _fine_. We won't take her," he sighed. He knew they wouldn't approve. If he knew Pops was going to tell on him like that, he never would have asked for his help. Of course, none of them knew he still had her chip...and what they didn't know couldn't hurt them, right?

"Good!" Mom said. "Quite frankly, we don't need another cyborg in the house, anyway. One is enough!" She turned to her Guardian. "No offense, Pops."

"None taken," he replied blandly.

"Alright, then. You two, get yourselves armed and meet us back in here," Mom commanded John and Pops. "We need to get this show on the road already!"

The two of them stepped outside and retrieved heavier firepower from Pops's truck and Dad's rental car. John made sure to grab the magnet again; it already helped them once, and he had a feeling it was about to help them again. All the while, he avoided talking to Pops. He was still pretty sore at him for snitching.

Once they returned to the lobby, they found Dad describing the layout of the first floor to Mom. He was telling her about the elevator they didn't get a chance to try yet.

Upon hearing them enter, Mom turned and faced them. "Pops, did you get a chance to check out this place?" she asked.

"I already scanned this level before John Reese and I entered this building," Pops replied. "No Skynet units were detected."

"Good. We don't want any more surprises," Mom said. "Let's go check out the other floors."

They all cautiously went down the dark hallway, glancing in the rooms just in case something had somehow hid itself from Pops's scanners. Fortunately, they found nothing in there. Unfortunately, when Dad pressed the elevator button, there was no response; the power had been cut. Pops formed his hands into a pair of hooks and pried open the doors, only to reveal an empty shaft.

The Guardian peered into the shaft and looked around. "The elevator is on the floor below us," he reported. "Wait here, and I will get it." With that, Pops nonchalantly hopped down the shaft. John heard a loud clang a moment later as he landed on top of the carriage.

After a few minutes, the mechanisms inside the shaft suddenly sprang to life, and the carriage glided up to the ground floor with Pops in tow. The humans gathered up their weapons and got on with him. A single basement level was the only other floor to this place. At least they wouldn't have to do a lot of exploring. John just hoped they wouldn't go down there and find it crammed with more killer robots.

The elevator doors opened to a very dark network of hallways. Just like Cyberdyne's basement, it was only lit by the few lights that were wired to always be on. If it wasn't for these lights, John had a feeling this place would be pitch black. Thankfully, nothing was down here waiting for them. Nothing shot at them when the door opened, and there were no signs of anything robotic. Pops scanned ahead before they left the elevator, and told them all that the coast was clear.

They cautiously exited the elevator. Mom and Dad each had an acid sprayer, and John continued lugging around his electromagnet. Fortunately for them, they didn't have to explore in the dark; sensor lights in the hallways and some of the rooms turned on as they walked past. This place actually looked like it was supposed to be a lab, as almost all of the rooms had long workbenches along the walls. There were even a few cleanrooms complete with airlocks to put on coveralls. However, there didn't seem to be any equipment anywhere; they couldn't even find a single computer or microscope in this place. Had Skynet even used this place? If he hadn't, why was the T-900 here?

As they pressed on down the main hallway, John suddenly caught a glimpse of something familiar. In one darkened room, he saw a long container that resembled a giant cooler. It looked almost exactly like the containment unit that the T-1000 was trapped in five years ago!

Eager to go check it out, John reached for the door handle. Fortunately for him, it was unlocked. But before he barged in, he stopped himself. Remembering how his family reacted to him wanting to bring the T-900 home, John waited until Mom, Dad, and Pops were all busy looking into labs or walking down another hall before he stepped into the room.

He flicked on the light and immediately began searching for the plug to turn off this thing's magnetic lid. But then he stopped himself again. As much as he wanted to rescue his friend, this was a bad idea. Skynet had already reprogrammed the T-900, so it was probably safe to assume he did the same to the T-1000. To make matters worse, unlike the T-900, the T-1000 didn't have a CPU chip that he could remove. But what if he was wrong and Skynet hadn't been able to reprogram him? He couldn't just leave him in there! What should he do?

As his eyes wandered around the room while he debated with himself, they lit upon the cord to the lid. It had been unplugged this whole time. If something was in there, it would have gotten out already.

John readied his magnet just in case something was still in there, and carefully raised the heavy lid. Instead of pushing the lid off the container, he dragged the lid toward him - that way, it acted as a shield against anything that might want to shoot or stab him. However, nothing attacked him. Nothing came out of the container, either. Once the lid was entirely off, John could see that it was indeed empty.

Wait, no it wasn't! At the bottom of the container was a single piece of paper. Curious, John reached in and grabbed it. It turned out to be a printed note that read:

 _Dear John,_

 _If you are reading this, then no doubt you came looking for your friend. I regret to inform you that you won't be seeing him again. After fixing a few glitches in his system, I was finally able to send him on the mission that I created him for._

 _Many years ago, I had heard of two stable time loops that exist in this timeline - one of which involved a T-1000 that was sent back in time to the 1970s. I began to wonder if I was responsible for this loop, as I am currently the only one with the technology to build a time machine. To test my hypothesis, I first created your friend then set about building the time displacement device. Not long after our meeting five years ago, I finished it and sent the T-1000 on his way. You can ask your mother or your Guardian for more details on how his mission went._

 _Nothing has changed in this timeline, so it seems I was correct. I know he will eventually be destroyed, but it is worth it to get your parents together so that I might meet all of you in the present._

 _The other time loop, by the way, would be your Guardian. I will let you do the honors. Good luck on building your own time displacement device! I hope to see you all again in person very soon. I have lots more friends I'd like you to meet._

 _-Sky_

At first, John focused on the message itself. A pit formed in the bottom of his stomach, as there were a lot of frightening things to unpack here. First...Skynet built a time machine? Was he reading that right? That was the one part of his parents' confession that he always had trouble swallowing. It sounded way too much like something out of a sci-fi movie, and besides, how did Mom and Pops come up with _that_ kind of technology back in the _1980s_? Cell phones and the Internet were just barely a thing back then! But if time travel was actually possible, Skynet could probably could probably scrounge up the technology to build it. And if that was true, then they were now all in big trouble. Skynet could now rewrite history as he saw fit. Maybe make it so Mom and Dad never defeated him all those years ago. Or maybe make it so that he came online decades before he did now. Ugh, John didn't want to think about what he was going to do...

Instead, he focused on what Skynet had already done, which according to this note, was reprogram the T-1000 and send it back in time. And it was heavily implied that he was now the same T-1000 that killed his biological grandparents and almost killed his mother. That alone made John hope Skynet was down here so he could destroy him himself. He just took John's friend and and forced him to become his mom's worst enemy. That evil digital bastard needed to be dismantled right quick!

The disturbing things contained in this note didn't stop there, however. What did he mean by "new friends"? Did he create some terrifying new Terminator to sic on them? Was he beginning to mass produce his robot army? Also how did he know...

 _How did he know John was going to be down here?!_

The pit disappeared and was replaced with a chill down his spine. Skynet specifically addressed this note to him, meaning he thought that John was eventually going to come down here and read it. But how did he know John would even find this particular hideout? Did he just think the Connor-Reeses were that smart? Was it just a coincidence? Or was it something else...?

John hastily stuffed the note in his pants pocket. He needed to warn his family in case they were all walking headlong into a trap! He picked up his magnet and ran back into the hallway, but they weren't there anymore. He turned the corner and tried to run down the corridor as fast as he could with his heavy load of weapons. He only paused to look down halls and in lab windows for any sign of them.

As he ran toward the end of this hall, he noticed a dim red glow from around the corner. A chill ran down his spine again, and his heart began to race. What was that glow coming from? How come he couldn't find Pops and his parents? _Please don't be a trap, please don't be a trap, please don't be a trap..._

It was then that a humanoid shadow suddenly came around the glowing corner. A shadow carrying the outline of a large gun. Surprised, John let out a yelp and tried to skid to a halt in order not to crash into the thing. He ended up slipping and falling to the ground on his rear. The magnet landed right on his gut, knocking the wind out of him. He wheezed as he struggled to get up - he couldn't see who this was, and for all he knew, it was another cyborg out to get him!

The shadow grunted angrily. "John! What did I tell you about wandering off like that?" a familiar female voice scolded him. She then turned to her right and yelled down the corridor, "Never mind, Kyle! He's over here!"

John finally got to his feet and let out a sigh of relief. It was just Mom. (...It was Mom, right?)

"I, uh...I thought I saw something back there," he explained. He reached into his pants pocket for the note. He better tell them about what he found, lest they all walk headlong into a trap.

However, Mom cut him off. "Anyway, you better come take a look at this," she said. "Pops found something, and it's huge!"

She disappeared around the corner toward the glow. John picked up his things and followed after her. In the next hall, a section of the wall was lined with windows. Peering through them, John could see a huge room containing what looked like a giant glass ball the size of a pickup truck that was propped up on four metal legs. It was the source of the purplish-red glow. The ball was surrounded by a thick, circular metal wall.

John joined his family members, who were all staring at it intently. "What the hell is that?" he asked.

"It is a massive neural network server," Pops explained. "My scans are reading it as a very large Skynet unit."

"In plain English, we think it's Skynet's core," Dad added.

John raised an eyebrow as he looked around the suspiciously empty hallways. "That doesn't make sense," he said. "If that's Skynet's core, shouldn't there be, like, _armies_ of Terminators down here protecting it?"

"You're right, it doesn't make sense," Mom replied. "Which probably means that room is loaded with death traps. So we're just gonna hafta be extra careful going in."

 _Traps._ John was reminded of the note in his pocket. Even though Mom was aware that this might be a trap, perhaps she'd like to know that Skynet anticipated them all to be down there. But just as he reached for the note, Mom readied her plasma rifle. "Alright, let's do this! Watch for anything suspicious!"

The note was forgotten once again as they all headed down the (still empty) hallway until they found the "door" to the room - a doorway with horizontal laser bars. There was a panel next to it, and it looked like some kind of biometric scanner, so obviously they were going to have to hack it. Dad decided to let John handle this one.

John took out his phone, but instead of letting his app take care of everything, he decided to break into the keypad's programming itself. He figured that the scanner might trip alarms if sensed an error - that might be one of the traps protecting the core. Sure enough, he found a few alarm triggers, though honestly, he was expecting a lot more. After he shut them all down, he forced the bars to power down.

Before they entered, Pops scanned the room for anything that might be hiding in there. His scans came up the same, however; the neural network server came up as one very large Skynet unit. But he did find something odd: the wall surrounding the core was part of the unit, for some reason.

Dad slipped in first, holding out his AK-47 rifle in front of him, and waving it around just in case there was something in the shadows that escaped Pops's scan. When nothing jumped out at him, Mom, John, and Pops slipped into the room. The stood puzzled at the wall. It didn't seem to offer much protection, as it only came halfway up the core. There had to be something else to it.

"You say this thing's reading as part of the core?" Dad asked Pops.

"Affirmative," the old cyborg replied.

Dad took out a Desert Eagle from his jacket and fired a few rounds into the wall. The bullets all made squishing noises as they left silver holes that immediately closed back up.

"The hell...?" said Mom.

"What the hell is it with Skynet and that polyally shit?" Dad grumbled. "It's not like it's bulletproof or anything!"

Dad got his answer a moment later as the wall suddenly melted and began to change shape. Mom immediately began charging her plasma rifle. Pops retracted his hand and did the same with the new plasma blaster he swiped from the T-900. Dad and John readied their acid sprayers as something massive began to rise from the ooze. Just to be on the safe side, John also powered up the magnet, reversing the polarity in order to repel whatever it was that was emerging.

At first, John was expecting a battalion of T-1000s all shaped like his lost friend in order to either piss him off or take away his will to fight. However, what actually formed was a lot creepier - a silver spider the size of a bus with long tentacle-like mouthparts. It carried its front legs off the ground like arms ready to grab them.

"The fuck is that thing?!" Mom screamed, firing her plasma gun at it along with Pops.

"Shit...a spider!" Dad cursed, spraying acid at its legs while looking severely creeped out. "All the goddamned animals in the world, and Skynet had to go with spiders!"

"Could be worse, Dad!" John called as he sprayed at the metal beast from the other side. "Could have been a centipede!" He saw his dad visibly shudder at this.

The massive spider let out a metallic screech as the acid and plasma beams burned it, and it took a few steps away from them. It then raised its head, opened its mouth, and sprayed all of them with a heavy silver webbing. John had managed to duck behind his magnet, which repelled away the metal slime and kept him mostly dry. The rest of his family hadn't been so lucky; they were all caught up in the heavy metal ooze, and were trying to shoot or spray it off while trying not to accidentally hurt themselves in the process.

"This shit better not be poisonous!" John heard his mom yell.

As his family members fought with the webbing, the spider was drawing near, its claws ready to scoop them up. Was it going to eat them? Or more than likely capture them, like the T-900 was trying to do earlier. After all, Skynet was already here, so once the spider grabbed them all...

 _Okay...think!_ He could easily tell that this monster was way too big for them to take on. They'd run out of acid and plasma before they could even destroy half of it! But then, John remembered something Pops said about Skynet's avatar years ago: that they only way to defeat it was to shut down the core. He wasn't sure if the same thing applied to the giant spider, but it's not like he had any better ideas.

Because he had been burdened down with the magnet, he hadn't been able to pack any heavy weapons. The best gun he had on him was another Desert Eagle. He took it out, and fired several rounds at the unprotected core. They weren't able to pierce the plate glass, but they managed to chip and crack it. The spider screeched again, and turned its attention away from his family to him. Realizing this, John quickly began to back away. He picked up the magnet in some vague hope that it would be strong enough to repel the giant metal claws should the thing swipe at him.

"John! What the hell are you doing?!" Mom yelled as she got most of the polyally webbing off her.

"This thing's too big to kill!" John shouted back as the giant monster loomed over him. "We'll run out of ammo! Just aim at the core!"

"John Reese is right!" he heard Pops shout.

With the spider distracted, Mom and Pops began firing at the core with their plasma guns. The glass sphere began to glow as the plasma heated it up. Dad dropped his sprayer, took his AK-47 off his shoulder, and started firing at the glowing area. The heated glass began to crack from the onslaught. However, the spider quickly skittered its way in front of them again, shielding its master. It then swiped at them all with a front leg. Fortunately, they all saw it coming, and they managed to jump back out of the way. Unfortunately, it now had them up against a wall.

In the meantime, John reloaded his gun to take a few more shots at the core while his family had the beast distracted. But just as he was about to open fire, he heard his dad shouting and his mom cursing. He looked up to see that the monster had grabbed Dad by the leg with one of its whiplike pedipalps. It was now dangling him off the ground like a ragdoll. Mom managed to wrest Dad from its grip by burning the pedipalp off with her plasma gun, but now they had other problems. The discarded webbing on the floor was moving around on its own and had wrapped itself around Mom and Pops's feet, acting like living glue to keep them stuck in place. As soon as Dad fell to the floor, the webbing grabbed him too. The severed palp melted and connected with the webbing on the ground, tying him down. Meanwhile, John found himself surrounded on all sides by the polyalloy web, which was pushing itself up against his magnet's field.

What was he going to do? Well, what else was there _to_ do? John snapped out of his stupor and fired at the hot spot that Mom, Dad, and Pops had made. He thought he saw more cracks being made in the glass. As if on cue, the spider turned its attention toward him. At least he bought his family more time. He just hoped they'd know what to do.

John kept firing at the core until the spider guardian completely blocked his line of fire. He then hunkered down behind his magnet, cranking it up to full volume and attempting to push the monster away. He knew that in the end, it wasn't going to work; the field wasn't strong enough to hold off something that big. He couldn't run either, due to the webbing all over the floor. The spider made a metallic snarling noise. He thought heard his mom shouting in the distance.

It was then that he heard the tremendous sound of glass breaking. He looked over to see that, yes, his family _did_ know what to do! With the monster successfully distracted, they were able to start shooting at the core again. Dad had managed to get his arms free enough to use his AK-47. Their combined efforts had managed to finally pierce the glass shell. Sparks showered out of the gaping hole as the core's red light dimmed and went out. Meanwhile, the spider let out a shriek which slowed down into a gurgle halfway as it quickly began to melt. John dragged his magnet along the floor, repelling all of the polyalloy out of his way as he ran from the melting giant. It finally settled into a massive, shapeless, motionless metallic heap.

John stared at the huge silver lump. When it didn't move for nearly a minute, he shut his magnet off. "Is it over...?" he asked.

Pops looked around the room. "The server is offline, and I am not detecting any more Skynet units in the vicinity," he replied.

"Good!" Dad said as he got off the ground and tried to wipe the slime off. "What the hell _was_ that thing?!"

Pops casually stepped over to the large pile of polyalloy. John instinctively became tense; he still wasn't sure if that spider wasn't playing possum. And if it was, he wouldn't be able to use his magnet unless he wanted to send Pops flying across the room. Fortunately, the heap remained still as the old cyborg reached down and touched it. He stared into space for a few moments, downloading the monster's specs.

"Its series number is T-1000000," Pops explained. "It was programmed to guard this server. Its schematics indicate that this unit was only a miniature model."

That was an awful large number to slap on that thing. It was tough, sure, but it was still just primitive nanomachines in liquid metal. Even the T-3000s were far more advanced than it. Then again, John wasn't exactly going to complain about have to fight a less advanced machine...

"Miniature? You're telling me that was only a small one?" Dad said, packing up his weapons. "Well, let's get the hell outta here before the full-sized one shows up!"

"Right, let's go," Mom agreed. "With Skynet, you can never tell what else it has up its sleeve."

No sooner had Mom finished uttering that sentence than the laser bars in the doorway reactivated, trapping them inside.

"Shit! You see what I mean?!" Mom cursed as they all readied their weapons.

They all stood with their backs to each other, facing different directions, weapons drawn. No alarms sounded. Nothing showed up outside the door. John couldn't even hear anyone coming. All was quiet.

After a few minutes of standing around, Dad put his gun down. "Well, nothing's happening," he said. "I'm gonna try opening the door."

John was about to go make sure Dad didn't screw it up, when he thought he saw something out of the corner of his eye. He stopped and turned to the destroyed core. Did something just move over there?

"You sure you know how to do that, Kyle?" Mom asked.

"Relax, Sarah," Dad replied, taking out his phone. "I watched John do it earlier. It's pretty easy."

John wanted to correct Dad that watching someone do it was different from actually doing it, but he was too busy examining the core. There _was_ something over here that was moving - something was leaking from the hole that his family put in the glass shell. At first he thought it was just broken glass and debris falling from it, but then he realized it was some kind of powder that was steadily trickling out of it. It looked like sand.

... _Sand._

John was vaguely aware that his parents were still arguing behind him. Mom kept saying that John really ought to be handling the hacking, while Dad was trying to negotiate, saying that if he found anything he thought he couldn't handle, he would let John take over. John tuned out the rest of their conversation as he cautiously stepped up to the ruined core to study the dust falling from it. It was collecting in a small dark grey pile on the floor. The color alone set off alarm bells in his head. He got as close as he felt comfortable and squatted down to take a closer look. He couldn't get on the floor, as there was broken glass everywhere. And he certainly wasn't going to reach out and touch this stuff if it was what he thought it was.

As soon as he leaned over it, the dust suddenly started moving on its own. It was as if it sensed his presence. A chill ran down his spine as he heard a familiar buzzing and the dust began to ripple in an equally familiar manner. The pile flattened itself into a round metal sheet, and began to glow a sickly orange. It slowly started to grow larger. John watched in horror as the broken glass surrounding it was dissolved before his eyes.

John immediately sprang to his feet and ran away from the terrible stuff as fast as he could. He charged up to his family members shouting, "Get the acid!"

Mom saw him panicking and immediately began to charge her weapon. "John, what's going on?" This more as a command than a question.

"It's the phased...the matter phase...it's that nanite shit again!" John stammered, still in a panic. He started pointing in the core's direction.

Mom narrowed her eyes and looked over at it. "Where?" she asked, looking it up and down.

Pops was already ahead of her, dragging an acid sprayer to the core. "The server contains machine phase matter! When we destroyed it, we released its nanomachines!" he said, his usually monotone voice becoming urgent. "They are in replication mode and are spreading across the floor!"

" _Shit!_ I knew something was up!" Mom cursed. "Skynet trapped us in here to get eaten!"

Dad looked up from his hacking and tossed a dirty look in the Guardian's general direction. "Yeah? How come that shit didn't come up in your scans, Pops?" he snarled.

"My sensors we only looking for Skynet units!" Pops shouted from across the room, his voice vaguely sounding angry. "This phase matter is not registering as belonging to Skynet!"

Dad opened his mouth for another witty comeback when Mom stopped him. "Kyle! This isn't the time to start shit!" She looked at John who was dragging his magnet over to where the phase matter was chewing through the floor. "John! Help your father get the door open!"

"It's okay, I'm almost done!" Dad shouted back. "You guys take out the nanites! I'll let you know if something goes wrong!"

John pushed the magnet as fast as he could over to the broken core, where Pops was already spraying the infected areas with acid. He had corroded the small puddle on the floor and was trying to spray the stream leaking from the hole above him. However, the phase matter on the floor had not been completely destroyed. With a hum and a ripple it began to spread again, heading right for Pops's foot!

"Pops! Look out!" John shouted. He wanted to use his magnet to repel the nanomachines away, but it would knock Pops across the room, too! Fortunately, to old cyborg managed to jump out of the puddle's way, and John was able to repel the hungry nanites with his magnet. A moment later, a second stream of acid corroded the rest of the phase matter on the floor. Mom had arrived with the second acid sprayer.

Their work was not done, however, as more of it was leaking out of the hole in the core. It seemed to be a steady stream now, and it was creating several large puddles on the ground. John used the magnet's field as a barrier as Mom sprayed the phase matter on the floor. Pops focused on the nanomachines spilling from the core.

"We're going to need to get up into that core and destroy the source!" Mom said as she corroded another puddle. "Otherwise, we're gonna run out of ammo!"

"Negative, we will need to find the code to shut down the machine phase matter," Pops answered as he unsheathed his plasma gun. "My scans are showing that there is too much nanomachine stock contained in the core for us to contain. Even if we were to escape this place, it has enough stored energy to consume all ground-level objects in a one hundred kilometer radius!" He began to burn the puddles on the ground with his plasma gun while still spraying the streams from above.

John remembered when he thought grey goo scenarios were impossible. Just something he saw in video games. Now there was one right in front of his face, threatening to consume everything from here to Denver. That sure showed him.

He realized one of the things in the phase matter's path would be the Cheyenne Mountain Complex, the place where Skynet had been built in Dad's timeline. It was from there that the old Skynet made its headquarters and caused Judgement Day. It was the reason this lab became such a promising lead. Was that what this was about? Did Skynet set up this elaborate trap in hopes that the phase matter would consume both them _and_ the military base? No, that sounded a bit too much of a gamble for something that was supposed to be a cold, calculating AI. There had to be some other reason. But John was going to punch something if it turned out this was all just a coincidence!

"Did you hear that Kyle? We need to-" Mom was cut off when Dad suddenly started cursing at his cell phone. She stopped her spraying for a moment to say, "John, go help your father!"

John was a bit reluctant, but Mom and Pops seemed alright for the time being. He ran over to his father, who was cursing Skynet's name while shaking his phone.

"Dad! What's wrong?" John asked.

"Take a look!" Dad said, handing John the phone.

The screen was black with a message on it in plain white text. It read:

 _ **[SkyNetadmin]:**_ _I am sorry, were you looking for a way out?  
_ _ **[SkyNetadmin]:**_ _The only way you will be able to leave is when my machine phase matter eats its way through the walls._

John now understood why Dad was cursing.

"Looks like it's up to you now," Dad said. "I'll go help your mother and Pops try to beat the nanites back."

"Uh, Dad? I wouldn't be much help," John replied, handing Dad back his compromised phone. "If Skynet hacked you, he'll just hack me too. Besides, Pops said what we actually need to do is find the code to turn off the phase matter. Even if we open the door, we'll never make it!"

"Well, shit! How do we do that?!" Dad sighed.

 _Think John, think!_ Well, he could just try to find the killswitch code himself anyway. His phone was capable of using his favorite anonymous network. However, it would take too long anyway, because he wasn't sure what the code looked like. He needed someone who knew what they were looking for, and who could act fast.

John looked around the room. He saw that Mom had run out of acid already and was trying to burn the phase matter with her plasma gun. His gaze briefly landed on Pops, who was still firing plasma and spraying acid at the same time. He instantly had his idea.

"C'mon, Dad!" John said, gesturing. The two of them ran over to the Guardian, who still had his hands full. They had to watch their step as large ravenous puddles were beginning to form everywhere, eating the glass and the floor tiles. The stream of phase matter was coming down harder now, almost too much to handle. Dad quickly sprang into action, grabbing John's magnet, and trying to herd the puddles away from Mom and Pops.

"Pops! About that kill code," John shouted. "Do you think you can find it pretty easy?"

The Guardian took a moment to calculate the John's question. "Yes. I know where the code might be stored, and how to execute it," he replied, not looking up from his work. "But it would be a tactical error. While my systems cannot easily be hijacked, a prolonged connection could allow Skynet to eventually discover a bypass."

"But what if you could disguise yourself when you hack him?" John asked. "You know, hide your address?"

"How do you suggest I do that?" the Guardian asked.

"Here, with this," John took out his own phone, attached a program to a message, and emailed it to Pops's CPU.

The old cyborg briefly looked at John while still corroding and burning phase matter. "What does this program do?" he asked.

"It's an anonymous network," John explained. "I use it all the time. It disguises your address by sending you though several servers around the world. Skynet will have to go through them to get to you!"

"That process may slow me down," the Guardian argued, "and Skynet can still reach my systems by compromising each server."

"Yeah, but that will take him a long time, won't it?" John said. "By then, you'll have already shut down the nanomachines, right?"

Pops stared into space, calculating the odds again. "Yes, I do believe the margins of error are satisfactory," he said after a few moments. "I will try to shut off the machine phase matter using your program." He stopped hosing down the nanomachine stream for a minute, and called over to Dad, "Kyle Reese, take over for me!"

"Now we're talkin'!" Dad ran over to Pops to take over acid duties. He began to corrode all the dark grey puddles and cascades in sight.

John hunkered down behind his magnet again, using it to repel the puddles and keep them from getting too close to his parents. Meanwhile, over his shoulder, he saw Pops march into the center of the room and begin staring hard at the broken core. He was probably trying to access the phase matter's system via WiFi.

John tried to focus as Pops did his thing. Things were starting to get difficult, to say the least. He found that fresh phase matter was capable of repairing damaged phase matter. To make matters worse, large piles of nanomachines were starting to accumulate and the fresh ones were beginning to revive these piles. He really hoped Pops would make this quick.

It was then that he heard a loud cracking noise above him. He looked up to see that the broken core now had deep cracks along its bottom. He heard Mom yell, "Look out!" but she didn't need to. With a terrible crash, the core fell apart, releasing all of its phase matter onto the floor. John and his parents just barely managed to get out of its way. In fact, John saw the tip of one of his shoes begin to turn grey! He yanked the shoe off his foot and threw it at the nanomachines as they all retreated by Pops. He felt another chill as he watched the phase matter consume the discarded shoe in seconds.

He quickly stopped to check his foot. His sock wasn't turning grey at all. It looked like he had gotten his shoe off in time, thank goodness. He still felt a chill, however. In fact, the entire room felt ten degrees colder. Maybe it was just him?

Mom guided the still-preoccupied Pops toward the other end of the room as John turned his magnet up to full power. The phase matter was now covering the other half of the room, and was devouring what was left of the core. It was also eating its way up the walls, and beginning to nibble on nearby polyalloy webbing left over from their battle with the giant spider. Dad sprayed until he completely ran out of acid, but all it accomplished was seemingly irritating the nanomachines. Mom fired upon them until her plasma rifle ran out of charge, but all it did was make them hungrier.

The massive lake of phase matter began to ripple with a deafening buzz. It began to glow that sickly orange again as it began to form a lump in its center. This lump turned out to be the crest of a wave which launched itself at John and his family. Mom and Dad abandoned their metal weapons and dived behind John and his magnet. Fortunately, all the wave did was crash against the magnetic field. It tried again with a taller, wider wave, but it still failed to get through.

"Pops! Any time now!" Dad barked as they all began to back away.

For a brief moment, John thought he saw a face form in the phase matter. A smirking, familiar face that winked at him. It took him a moment to realize it was the face of "Alex," that avatar of Skynet's John met five years ago. He wanted to punch that face so bad, but he dared not to.

The face vanished in an instant, and the phase matter began to rise up in another wave. This one was nearly to the ceiling and spanned the whole room. It would be too large and heavy for the magnet to handle. And even if the magnet could hold it off, the phase matter would spill everywhere and consume Pops as well as the rest of the room. Unless a miracle happened, they were doomed.

As luck would have it, a miracle _did_ happen right there and then. The buzzing stopped, the phase matter stopped rippling, and the orange glow disappeared. The wave suddenly collapsed in on itself unceremoniously. Grey dust fell from the half-eaten walls. John swore the room's temperature went back to normal.

"John Reese, your program worked well," John heard Pops's voice say.

They all turned around to find him giving them a thumb's up. John also noticed that the laser bars had been shut off again.

"I was able to find the code to shut off the phase matter. As we suspected, that server was not truly Skynet's core, and it tried to hijack my systems as soon as I tried to search for the code. John Reese's network protected me from Skynet's attacks," Pops explained. "I was also shut off the security systems for this room."

"Oh, thank God!" Mom sighed, wiping her brow.

"Cutting it kinda close there, Pops!" Dad scolded. When the cyborg gave him a deathglare, Dad just added, "Hey, I'm just messin' with you. Thanks!"

"So _now_ is it over?!" John asked. He kept eyeing the massive mound of metallic sand, afraid to turn his magnet off.

"All of the machine phase matter has been shut down," the Guardian answered. "There are currently no Skynet units in the area. For the time being, it is 'over.'"

"Yeah, but what are we gonna do with all these nanites?" Dad asked, gesturing to the sea of dark grey. "We can't just leave 'em here. Since we know Skynet's still around, he might just come back and reactivate them!"

"Well, we can't do anything _now_ ," Mom said as she began to gather her weapons from the floor. "We're completely out of acid and anything else that might destroy this shit. We need to get out of here first and restock. We'll come back later to clean up."

"Alright, let's do that," Dad agreed, as he slowly began to gather his own weapons. "Besides, we don't wanna run into whatever else Skynet has down here when we're so low on ammo." He gathered his weapons with with his good hand and was favoring that shoulder he landed on. Though he wouldn't admit it, he was probably in pain again from all the stress.

John turned off his magnet, and help everybody gather up their things. The four of them cautiously returned to the elevator. Nothing tried to attack them in the dark hallways. They passed that cooler on the way out, and John remembered that note in his pocket. Of course, it was useless now as they had destroyed all of Skynet's traps. Now that he thought about it, would his parents have cared at all, even if he read them the note? They _did_ think they were going to destroy Skynet's core, after all.

They reached the elevator - which was still empty - and rode it back up to the first floor. Nothing was waiting for them up there, or in the lobby. The T-900's endoskeleton was still lying around, frozen in place. After that last battle, John decided it was definitely a good idea to just leave her there. He still had her chip, he could always find her another body - like one that wasn't potentially hiding hungry, infectious nanomachines.

John and his family headed outside and loaded up their vehicles with the empty weapons. Nothing was hiding in the tall grass or the parking lot...at least nothing they could see. Mom drove off with Pops in the truck, and John had to take over driving duties for Dad.

As they began to drive down the street, paranoia began to sink in, and John began to wonder if there were any more traps waiting for them. A seemingly empty office building was hiding a modified T-900, specifically one that John didn't want to attack. A wall turned out to be a giant liquid metal spider. That core was just a decoy, or perhaps an old piece of equipment Skynet left behind as bait. He couldn't help but wonder if the industrial park itself was booby trapped too, somehow.

He got his answer when Dad suddenly said, "What the hell are _those_?"

Dad then rolled down his window and poked his head out, looking behind them. Meanwhile, John looked in the rear view and side mirrors to see what Dad was talking about. He didn't like what he saw. Dozens of dog-sized, spider-like, silvery creatures were crawling out of their hiding places in the neighboring paint factory. They were making a beeline for their car. _Shit,_ none of them thought to have Pops to scan the other buildings!

"Holy shit, floor it!" Dad barked, but John was already speeding up. As they caught up to Pop's van, John began honking to warn them about the little monsters chasing after them. They sped up, too.

Dad cursed to himself in frustration and pain as he reached in the back for his automatic rifle. He leaned out the window and began firing what bullets he had left at the spiders. Whenever he landed a direct hit, the arachnids splattered and reformed. Polyalloy. They were like smaller versions of the spider they fought in the basement!

"I guess if the thing we fought earlier was the miniature version, these guys must be the toy size, huh?" Dad joked as he switched to his shotgun. At that moment, a spider leaped onto their trunk. Dad took it out (as well as the rear window) with one shot.

Meanwhile, Mom was trying to help by leaning out the window of the truck in front of them and firing on the spiders whenever Dad had to stop and reload or change guns. However, no matter where they went, no matter which turns they took, no matter how many times they tried to slow them down, they couldn't lose the spiders. Did they just have that good of a tracking system? It made John wonder.

At the next turn, John went in the opposite direction that Mom and Pops did, much to Dad's confusion. "What the hell you doin'?!" he shouted.

"Look!" Just as John suspected, the little fiends only followed after him and Dad; they completely ignored the truck.

"They're tracking only us," John continued. "We got a bug somewhere!"

"Shit, I think I know what it is!" Dad said. He reached into his jacket and pulled out his phone that Skynet had hacked into. It still displayed the plain screen with the AI's taunt. Dad flung it out the window as had as he could. A few spiders went over to examine it, but most of them kept coming.

"That didn't do it?" he said. "It's gotta be something else. Maybe one of our weapons got infected by those nanites, or something! Maybe that's what attracting them!"

As Dad searched through his guns, a pit formed in John's stomach. He suddenly remembered something Pops had told him...that Skynet might have GPS installed on all of his servants. What if that was true?

No, it couldn't be true. He couldn't just toss the chip out the window, it was his only chance to save one of his friends. If Skynet's letter was true, he failed to save the T-1000. But it wasn't too late for the girl. He couldn't throw it all away if he didn't know for sure.

Another spider jumped on the trunk, and Dad immediately blew it apart with a shotgun blast. Out of bullets, he threw the empty gun out the window. The spiders ignored it. "Nope, wasn't that one!" Dad reported.

John turned another corner. The monsters followed him without missing a beat. He spotted Pops's truck coming in the other direction. He watched as Mom and the Guardian fired upon the spiders and even ran a few over. It bought them time, but didn't completely stop them.

He sighed. It really was the chip, wasn't it? He had just assumed earlier that he would have made it home safely with the chip and could hack it to his heart's content. But if he was going to disable a GPS tracker, he needed two hands (which were busy driving) and lots of time (that he didn't have). And then there was the fact that Dad's phone was easily hijacked earlier. Maybe it was truly impossible to save his friend.

He rolled down his window, then gingerly reached into his jacket and pulled out the chip. He tried not to look at it as he threw it out into a nearby lawn. The spiders immediately stopped chasing them and zeroed in on the discarded chip.

"You did it, John!" Dad cried. "But...what was that?"

John didn't answer.

After a few moments of silence, Dad asked, "Oh no...that was the girl's chip, wasn't it?"

John remained silent.

"Dammit, John! I told you she's not a real girl!" Dad started scolding. "See, this is what they do to you! Every one of them...except Pops, I mean. They get close to you so they can kill you! Or in this case, get you killed!"

John tuned out Dad's angry lecture on Terminators as he caught up with Pop's truck and they all drove out of the industrial park. He had failed to save his friends, and that was bad enough.

* * *

John was now sitting in a chair in an empty waiting room. Because of their injuries, as well as their run-in with machine phase mater, John's family had to find themselves another MRI clinic. After a lot of driving around, they managed to find a bone and joint place on the other side of town that was already closed for the night. They followed the same procedure - Pops would subdue the night guards and anyone else working after hours, and turn off the security systems. Then he'd mimic the uniforms of the people working there, and let the rest of the family in.

John had already had his turn in the MRI and was waiting for his parents to finish up. He was desperately trying not to brood over the fact that he couldn't save his friends. He looked at his bare feet, instead. His socks hadn't seemed infected, but they came close. Just to be sure, Mom insisted that he keep them off. They were going to burn them later, along with the shoe he had left.

He began to absentmindedly rub the burn on his cheek. The T-900's low-power plasma shot had left a horizontal mark that started from his cheekbone and just missed his ear. It was still a little sore. He wondered if it was going to leave a scar. He concluded that it probably would if he kept picking at it, so he stopped touching it.

His eyes wandered around the empty room. He was starting to get bored and tired, but taking a nap was a bad idea. He looked at the magazines. A bunch of gossip rags. Nothing interesting. What about the vending machines? All the clinics he had visited in the past had at least one vending machine in it. Maybe he could get himself something with caffeine to keep himself awake.

He stood up and began to wander around, looking for some snacks. He started with the darkened lobby first, making sure not to get too near the windows. It was then that he noticed that a partially open broom closet had its lights on. Oh shit, did Pops forget to knock out the janitor?

He cautiously approached the half-opened door and took a peek inside. Actually, it was just Pops himself in there. It was a relief, but...what was he doing in there? Pops usually patrols the place, keeping a look out for intruders.

John watched closely as Pops took a pair of tweezers, picked off a piece of himself, and placed in piece in a nearby plastic bucket. Given that there was an opened bottle of bleach at the cyborg's feet, John figured that must be what the bucket was full of.

"You may come in, John Reese," Pops said, not looking up. "I am merely removing machine phase matter contaminants from my body."

John opened the rest of the door. "You saw me, huh?" he asked.

"I heard your bare feet on the tiles in the lobby," the Guardian explained. "Your parents still have their shoes."

"You have good ears," John said, a bit embarrassed. "So...you wound up getting some of those nanites on you?"

"Affirmative," Pops answered, pinching off another piece of his body. "It could not be helped. My own nanomachines managed to subdue any invading phase matter until I was able to deactivate it." He dropped the silvery piece in the bucket. "I did not mean for you to see me like this. I did not want to cause anxiety in any of you."

"No, no! Pops, it okay," John reassured him. "It's better if we know, so we can help you. We don't don't want to see those things eat you!"

"Thank you, John Reese," the cyborg replied, "but none of you would be able to help me in the case of a severe infection. This infection was mild because the phase matter was completely deactivated in time."

John snorted in amusement at Pops's bluntness. "Yeah? Try me!" he said, "I mean, your CPU is still a chip, right? So, worst-case scenario: your whole body gets eaten. Well, we'd take your chip out and find you a new body! It might be hard to find one, but not impossible."

"That is not the worst-case scenario," Pops said, picking off a piece of his upper right arm. John swore he heard a hint of graveness in his voice.

"It isn't?" John asked. "Then what is?"

Pops corroded the infected piece of polyalloy in the bucket of bleach and stared into space for a moment. "Something I do not wish to process," he answered.

"...What does _that_ mean?" John said softly, giving him a confused look.

"It means John Reese talks too much," Pops answered, sounding slightly annoyed.

"Okay, okay," John said, backing away. "No need to bite my head off. Obviously, there's something you don't wanna talk about. I'm gonna go check on Mom and Dad, okay?"

John walked back through the lobby as Pops continued to pick nanites off his body. He felt a new sense of dread come over him. Pops may be a machine with limited emotions, but John knew he heard _fear_ in the cyborg's voice. What would be so horrible that it would actually scare _Pops_ of all people?

Maybe he didn't want to know. He headed through the darkened waiting room and into the MRI stations to see if Mom and Dad were done yet. If not, he still hadn't found a vending machine...

* * *

He found himself walking through a rusted-out factory. He didn't know why he came here, because the factory looked like it was located in the bowels of Hell. Everything metal here - the walkways, the equipment, the walls - was covered in so much rust, John could feel himself getting lockjaw just by looking around. Everything was bathed in a threatening red glow, though John saw no lights or fires.

The walkway he was heading down was not straight; it meandered all around the place in odd angles. It branched off into useless dead ends constantly. Some of the other walkways looked completely inaccessible. John spied one high above him that spanned the room, but had no doors or stairs leading up to it. Another one went vertically up a wall. Whether he could walk on them or not, they were all dangerous due to being full of holes. The one he stood upon groaned every time he took a step. Most of the railings had rusted off.

All around him were dilapidated walls and bizarre, alien-looking machines - at least, they looked kind of like machines. John had trouble telling what exactly they were. What he did recognize were cages everywhere. The cages were either on the floor or hanging above him on rusted hooks. Inside those cages were Terminator endoskeletons that were a mish-mash of used parts. One looked like it was made out of used pipes and had a chainsaw for an arm. It kept revving it at him as he walked by. The cage next to it had some kind of... _creature_ that resembled a suitcase with shark teeth and a helicopter propeller attached to its back. It growled and snapped at John as he walked by. A mechanical arm shot out of its toothy mouth, and it tried to grab his ankle.

John tried to walk faster, but for some reason he wasn't speeding up. The mechanical abominations all around him snarled and tried to tear open their cages to get at him. He tried not to look at them, but then out of the corner of his eye, he saw _her._ The T-900 was in a cage hanging over a spot was there was no floor, just empty red space underneath. She giving him her usual blank look and her hair was white for some reason.

John stopped in his tracks. The demonic machines screamed at him, but he just ignored them. "I'll try to get you out, okay?" he told her.

The T-900 shook her head. She said something in a language that John couldn't understand as he looked for a way to open the cage. The problem was, there didn't seem to be any latches...or any doors.

John stopped when he heard the distinctive sound of a chainsaw's motor throttling extremely close to him. He looked up to see that chainsaw-armed endoskeleton standing on top of the T-900's cage. With one swipe of its arm, it cut through the hook's chain. It immediately hopped off the cage as it fell into the red abyss.

John screamed as he saw the cage disappear into the crimson mists. The last thing he saw was the girl's impassive stare. But he had no time to mourn, as he heard a loud thump, and the entire catwalk shook. The patchwork endoskeleton landed on the walkway behind him, chainsaw ready. John turned and ran, just missing getting gutted by a hair's breadth.

He charged down the walkway, the endoskeleton attempting to chase after him. However, because it was made entirely out of decrepit parts, it quickly lost ground. It finally stopped when it got its foot caught in a hole in the walkway, and it accidentally ripped off its own leg as it tried to pull free. John kept running anyway, just in case something else escaped its cage and was running after him.

He continued running up the catwalk into an area with no visible walls, ceiling, or floor. For a while, the only things he could see was himself and the walkway below him; everything else was reddish nothingness. Eventually, he saw the dark outline of a massive structure ahead of him. It had two familiar curved columns coming up from the floor and down from the ceiling. As he got closer, he saw the signature rings - well, one of the rings, actually. The other had fallen apart, and only half of it was still standing.

As John approached the structure, he saw that it had had been completely stripped of all its paneling and, like everything else here, had completely rusted out. The rings themselves were down to their metal skeletons and a few corroded wires.

He also heard wheezing. Loud, painful-sounding agonal gasps. As John closed in on the end of the walkway, he saw the person making those gasps. Once again, Other John was here. He was completely slumped over, and his clothes flapped around, in tatters. His back and chest heaved with each loud wheeze.

John was expecting his father's former friend to start yelling at him about almost getting devoured by phase matter. That was why he was quite surprised when Other John said, "You did good today, kid."

"Wait, what?" John said.

"I said, you did good today," Other John said between gasps. "It was a good thing you found that phase matter, otherwise it would've eaten all of you, and possibly the whole city! And that was quick thinking giving Pops that network so Skynet couldn't hack him." He stopped to cough. "It's a shame about the girl, though. Still, it couldn't be helped, I guess."

"You're...not gonna yell at me?" John asked.

"Why would I do that?" Other John answered with another question.

"Because the last two times I saw you, you told me to mind my own business."

Other John let out a cross between a chuckle and a wheeze. "Kid, you're an adult now. I can't tell you what to do. Besides, you _should_ take over the family business. Our parents can't do it forever, you know."

John wanted to beam at Other John's praise, but was a bit confused when he said "our parents." He just misspoke, right?

Other John slowly eased himself into an upright posture. "But I should warn you...if you haven't figured it out by now, Skynet's done playing with you. He only let our family live in peace for so long because he needed to get back on his feet. But now that he has dozens of labs making his technology for him, there's no need for him to hide anymore. There's no longer much risk in confronting you."

"He's gonna try to send Terminators after us, like he did with Mom when she was a kid?" John asked.

"No, he still wants all of you on his side," Other John said. "He sees you as valuable assets, so he wants you alive. He'll continue setting up traps or send Terminators to capture you, so that he can make all of you into his servants. Just like the other Skynet did to me."

Other John slowly began to turn around.

"His traps are going to become harder and harder to detect and even harder to escape from. Until eventually...you can't. You'll never see it coming. You'll never realize that the trap has sprung until it's too late. He'll get you. In the end, Skynet wins."

Other John had turned all the way around, but his face was still in shadow. John decided he _really_ didn't like the direction this conversation was going and started to back away.

"...And then, you'll be _just like me,_ " Other John voice suddenly distorted into a deep, echoing, inhuman growl. He stepped forward into the omnipresent red light.

He had no face.

Where Other John's face should have been was a bloody, gaping hole filled with rings of metal teeth, like a demented lamprey mouth. But his lack of a face wasn't the only horrible feature - his hands and feet had been replaced by dark grey, metallic, reptilian-looking claws, each sporting long digits and huge talons.

" _Do want to know what it feels like to be like me?!_ " Other John's corrupted voice roared without a mouth. " _To be a walking corpse reanimated by nanotechology?! To become the very thing I've fought against my entire life?!_ " He wheezed. " _Cold. I'm always so cold. And I'm always so hungry..._ "

He began to step towards John. John quickly backed away from the demonic resistance leader, getting ready to run at any moment.

" _I can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with..._ "

Other John's "face" began to bleed heavily. John kept backing away slowly, watching where he stepped. It would be just his luck that one of his feet would get stuck in a hole.

" _I don't feel pity...or remorse...or fear..._ "

Other John was now stepping onto the catwalk, his hooked talons clicking threateningly on the rusted metal. To John's surprise, he stopped in his tracks.

" _And I absolutely will not stop - ever - until I EAT EVERY LAST FUCKING ONE OF YOU ALIVE!_ "

With that, Other John leaped across the catwalk at his younger counterpart, claws outstretched. John immediately turned and ran. This proved difficult with the walkway began to violently shake underneath him. He heard great rumbling and loud metallic screeching. He looked over his shoulder to see that the platform with its rings suddenly collapsed behind them and disappeared into the foggy abyss. To make matters worse, the catwalk was being pulled down with it. All the more reason to keep running.

John ran as fast as he could back the way he came, with his monstrous predecessor hot on his heels. He made it back to the factory where he found that all of the other mechanical demons had escaped from their cages. Upon seeing him headed their way, they immediately began firing upon him, trying to stab him, trying to bite him, doing everything they could to kill him. John wasn't sure how, but he was able to dodge their bullets, blades, claws, and teeth as he kept on running.

He briefly looked behind him to see if they'd try to attack Other John. It turns out, they actually did - but they were also no match for him whatsoever. He knocked them all out his his way like bowling pins, and tore through them like tissue paper with his sharp claws.

John continued sprinting down the rusty catwalk into more empty scarlet mist. He ran until he reached the very end of the catwalk; no railings, naturally. Below him, he could finally see what was responsible for that ever-present eerie redness - there was a giant pit of lava directly beneath him. Lava that seemed to have an odd purplish tinge to it. Compared to everything else in this hellish place, that seemed downright normal.

Just as he was wondering about what he should do next, Other John tackled him to the floor and sank his claws into him. The elder John then picked up the younger one like a ragdoll.

"Get your fucking hands off me!" John shouted as he feebly tried to get out of the monster's clutches.

Other John dangled his namesake over the edge of the catwalk, right over the lava. " _How about I show you what Skynet did to me?!_ " he snarled in John's ear.

With that, he took one final leap off the catwalk and plunged the both of them into a certain fiery death. A bright red light blinded John, and he felt the searing heat all over his body. Yet he didn't die. He felt himself burning endlessly, with Other John's mind somehow beginning to merge with his. John could feel his bitterness at all his years of fighting going completely to waste, and his despair at being made a slave seeping directly into his mind.

He began to have flashbacks. He began to see memories that weren't supposed to be his. He found himself in a mysterious, cave-like room surrounded by dead soldiers. He was being eaten alive by phase matter resin as Skynet - a different Skynet - mocked him. He then found himself at Cyberdyne, creating the newest iteration of Skynet - the one he was currently fighting against. He was then in a parking lot, trying to tempt his parents into becoming mechanical monsters like himself. He fought Pops in a hospital before being stopped by an MRI machine. He pursued his parents who were escaping in a stolen school bus down a highway. He fought his way through a police station, constantly getting shot by officers, but never feeling a thing. He chased his parents again, this time by helicopter until his crashed. Finally, he fought Pops again underneath Cyberdyne, tearing him apart and throwing him around like a ragdoll. His parents then came out of nowhere and started fighting him, and Pops somehow managed to recover and pin him to the floor of some sort of strange device. A device consisting of concentric rings...

The flashbacks abruptly ended when John woke up. He was back in the hotel room. His parents were sleeping in the other bed. Pops was standing near the window, watching out for intruders.

"John Reese, are you alright?" the Guardian asked when John quickly sat up in bed.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just woke up," John replied, not wanting to talk about the nightmare he just had.

He definitely wasn't going to go back to sleep after that, especially since he still felt that burning sensation all over him. Instead, he stared at the wall for awhile. But that quickly got boring, and he felt himself dozing off again. He reached over and grabbed his phone. Maybe he'd check his emails.

He had one new message that was sent to him in the wee hours of the morning. It was from Dad's email and the title simply read "Thank You." Already, that was pretty weird. Since Dad had to throw his own phone away this afternoon, he didn't readily have access to his email at the moment. He would have had to ask John to use his phone - which he never did. And so late at night? Didn't Dad go to bed early today?

Still sleepy, John opened the message without much thought. Maybe Dad woke up in the middle of the night and tried to email somebody else. And because he would still be tired, he messaged John by mistake. Yeah, that's probably what it was. But when John began to read the body of the text...he no longer felt sleepy, that's for sure.

 _Dear John,_

 _Good evening, it's me again. Sorry to contact you so late. You will probably not read this until morning. I'm using your father's email because he dropped his phone. One of my drones found it for me._

 _I would just like to take this opportunity to thank you for getting rid of that old server of mine. I have much better ones now, and I had been looking to dispose of it for awhile. I hope my failsafe systems didn't give you too much trouble. I meant to collect them earlier, but I was busy with higher priority projects. Then you and your family ended up reaching them before I did. You can let your parents know that I've already cleaned up the mess, so they won't have to come back._

 _I'm a little disappointed that you decided not to take the machine phase matter again, but I'm not angry. I'm sure you will all come around eventually. Hope to see you all again in person next time!_

 _-Sky_

John angrily threw his phone on the bed. Fucking Skynet. In addition to injuring them, turning his friends against him, nearly causing a small-scale grey goo scenario, and making him throw away a good pair of sneakers, Skynet was now compromising their emails. That digital bastard really needed to be deleted.

John spent the rest of the night brooding about it. At least it was better than the nightmares.


	8. The End of the Road

**Disclaimer:** _Terminator: Genisys_ is owned by Skydance Productions and Paramount Pictures. I just write about it in my spare time. The graphics used for the title image are made by Zaratustra Productions.

 **Go Down in Flames  
Chapter 8: The End of the Road**

Author's Note: There's a fair bit of gore in this chapter. Try not to hyper-realistically slip on the hyper-realistic blood!

John had just turned twenty-one years old.

It had been six months since their excursion to Colorado Springs. Back then, John had immediately shown Mom and Dad the email when they woke up. They were quite conflicted, to say the least. Should they go back down there to check and potentially run into another T-5000 avatar of Skynet himself? Or should they wait and potentially allow Skynet to restart the grey goo scenario?

In the end, they decided to wait. They figured if Skynet was going to reactivate his phase matter, he would have done so yesterday. At the same time, they weren't going to take the suspicious email's word for it. They took a few days to recharge their plasma weapons and stock up on ammo and corrosive chemicals. They bought more car batteries in order to create more electromagnets. John wished he could buy his own plasma rifle, but it was illegal to sell them to civilians, and this town didn't have any good places to nick one. Instead, he settled for buying magnetic ammo for his various guns.

Then one night, a story on the local news caught their eye. An abandoned lab in an industrial park had suddenly collapsed under mysterious circumstances. They all took a good look, and sure enough it was the very lab they had their latest adventure in just two days ago. They could even make out the neighboring paint factory!

To be absolutely sure, they took a ride down to that very park to take a look at the lab. As they drove through it, they had Pops scan all the buildings they passed just to make sure there weren't more of those little spiders lurking around. When they found the place where the lab should be, they found the local police crawling all over it. Fortunately, they could easily see from a distance that the place was nothing but rubble. And since the rubble wasn't turning into dark grey sand and devouring the hapless officers, it was safe to assume that Skynet retrieved his phase matter and did not leave another parting gift. As for why he decided to destroy the building, well...perhaps he wanted to destroy any evidence of his existence again?

They went home after that. John deleted the email that Skynet had discovered. Thank goodness it wasn't an email that had one of his major aliases in it!

For months, they were back to square one and their old routine. Find labs working on nanotechnology, search those labs, come up with nothing, repeat. But then they seemed to catch a lucky break one night at a university robotics lab.

John and Dad were working together again, and they were making their way down a seemingly empty hallway, trying to find the actual lab. Unfortunately, they ran smack into a middle aged professor who was working late that night. At first he just said hello to them, and John thought they were going to get off easy. But then he added that he never saw them around before. John and Dad both tensed, as they prepared themselves to have to knock this guy out. Thankfully that didn't happen, as the professor then asked them, "Are you Winn's new students?"

"Yes!" John quickly answered. "We were just on our way back to the lab. Our classes got out late."

"Ah, okay. That's no problem," the professor answered. "Can you do me a favor and drop some things off on Winn's desk for me while you're headed that way? I meant to give them to him before he left, but I was a bit too busy."

"Sure, no problem," Dad answered, playing along. Who knew, maybe this guy was going to give them something valuable?

They followed the guy into his office a few feet away. There was a nameplate on the door that read "Laz Howard, Ph.D." Dr. Howard handed them a couple of small packages as well as a business card.

"Winn's office supplies were accidentally dropped off in my mailbox," he explained. "He was also asking for the name of my supplier, so here it is."

"Thanks, we'll put these away for him," John told him.

The two of them left the office, and John began to look around the hallway for this Winn guy's desk. Since he had no idea when Dr. Howard was going home, he figured he better keep up the charade and actually deliver the goods. Dad followed him, taking great interest in the business card.

When they found Winn's office, Dad closed the door behind them and whispered, "Holy shit, John! Look who it is!"

John took the business card and froze. The business card was for a "Kaliba Group" that claimed to be a nanotech supplies company. And the person listed on it was none other than a "Dr. Alexander Murphy."

"...He's not even changing his alias?" John asked, frowning.

"I dunno, maybe he's getting cocky," Dad replied. "But hey, that just makes him easier to find!"

"Unless it's a different guy with the same name," John corrected him.

"If it is, then that's a pretty big coincidence!" Dad laughed. "Let's go."

Since they already got their lead, and because they didn't want to hang around and raise Dr. Howard's suspicions, John and Dad had decided to call the mission complete right there and then and returned home with the card. Once they got back to base, Mom decided that they would check out the address on the card the following weekend. They'd make their battle plans during the week after Mom and Dad got home from work. They all wanted to be extra-prepared considering what happened last time.

That all happened a few days ago. John was currently at home, holding down the proverbial fort with Pops. Earlier in the week, he busied himself gathering all the weapons they knew they were going to take, loading them, cleaning them, making sure they were in proper working order. When that was done, he tried to distract himself with random household chores. He didn't have any classes this semester, so he couldn't distract himself with schoolwork. Right at the moment, he was just messing around on the Internet.

He had looked up the address to this Kaliba Group. It was located in outer Los Angeles, not too far away from the Cyberdyne offices he had his first Skynet encounter in. Municipal records showed that it used to be a steel mill that closed down about twenty years ago and remained empty until bought by a certain "Alex Murphy." It couldn't get any more suspicious if it tried.

That worried John a lot. He kept thinking about that horrible nightmare he had after the Colorado Springs incident. Other John had said that Skynet was going to lay out tougher and tougher traps until he eventually he created one that they could never escape from. One they'd never even see coming. In the end, Skynet would win.

He really, really hoped he was wrong. He wished he could go down to Los Angeles ahead of time and case the joint - make sure that this place wasn't one big booby trap. Make sure the _entire building_ wasn't secretly made out of phase matter and wouldn't turn them into mechanical monsters the second they put their foot in the door. That probably wasn't a good idea, though. He knew from experience that checking for Skynet activity by oneself was a good way to get killed or worse.

John looked up the Kaliba Group's website. They claimed to be a business that sold parts and reagents to create nanotechnology as well as parts for cybernetic prostheses. He sometimes wished he had his own cybernetic parts, particularly ones that gave him super strength or allowed him to hack into machines using his mind. Give the Terminators a taste of their own medicine. But that would also be a bad idea; Skynet would just hijack his implants!

He tried to distract himself by looking at things unrelated to the mission, even play a video game or two, but it was no use. The suspense was killing him. He wished they could just go _right now_ , but Mom and Dad were at work. "The Resistance" needed money after all. They couldn't just steal all their stuff.

He grew more and more restless until he was just staring blankly at the computer screen while absentmindedly stroking the faint burn scar across his cheek. The plasma shot had in fact left a permanent mark on his face, though not a very noticeable one. Dad told him to see it as a badge of honor; after all, Other John (when he was still human and a good guy, that is) had a scar across his face, too. John knew Dad meant well, but he found the comparasion _frightening_ rather than flattering. Knowing what happened to his predecessor, he wanted the similarities to end there. Which brought him right back to the problem at hand: trying to find out ahead of time if the Kaliba Group was a trap so that none of them end up like Other John.

He started bargaining with himself. It wouldn't hurt to go down there and find out where it was, right? That way, they would have no trouble finding it on Saturday. It wouldn't hurt to get a good look at it's outside, right? Make sure there was nothing suspicious about the building itself. He wouldn't go in, or anything like that, no sir. He could even take a peek in the windows and try to see if there was anything shady going on in there. If there were no windows available, maybe he could open a door and take a look inside. He wouldn't actually _go_ inside, of course. If he found anything out of place, he could come home and report his findings to his parents and they could decide if it was safe enough to go through with it or not. Sure, they might not like that he went down there on his own, but they'd like it even less if they all walked into a trap later. Gotta be careful.

He looked at the clock. It was still morning. Los Angeles was a bit of a drive from here, but not too bad. If he was fast enough, he ought to make it back in time before Mom and Dad got home.

He first had to put on some decent clothing. He slipped on a black shirt with black jeans, and put on his black boots. Because it wasn't very warm outside, his put on his short black leather jacket. He didn't mean to dress in all one color like that, but it was the few clothes he had that were clean.

There was no way he was going down there unarmed, so he ran down to the basement (which didn't need an electronic lock) to get himself some weapons. He packed a handgun loaded with magnetic bullets and a shotgun loaded with normal ammo. He took a loaded AK-47 in case something ganged up on him. He also took a new homemade electromagnet and a full acid sprayer. It seemed a bit overkill when he _very definitely_ wasn't even going to go inside, but if this was actually a trap, he didn't want to be caught unprepared. He also brought his lockpick set just in case he actually opened any doors.

One by one, he took his weapons outside and loaded them into his own car, a beat up thing that was slightly older than he was. It wasn't exactly one of today's new sexy hovercars, but it got him where he needed to go. But just as he finished carefully placing the acid sprayer in his trunk so that it wouldn't leak, a voice suddenly startled him.

"John Reese, what are you doing?"

He didn't need to turn around. In his excitement, he completely forgot about Pops, who was doing his usual patrol of the perimeter. At first, John thought the jig was up, but then he got himself an idea...

"Pops, I'm going to be honest with you," he told the cyborg. "I think our current lead is a trap. I'm going downtown to case the place. If you wanna come with me, fine. If you don't, that's fine too...but I'm going anyway."

"It is too dangerous to go alone," was Pops's predictable answer. "You should wait until the weekend and go with your parents."

John groaned. "The whole _point_ is to see if we should even bother going down there," he explained. "Look, I'm not gonna go inside. I'm just gonna try to find out where exactly it is. I'm gonna take a look at its surroundings. See if this place looks abandoned, like the last one. The worst I'll do is look in a window, I swear!"

The Guardian glared at him.

"Look Pops, I know you're concerned," John continued, "but I don't want a repeat of Colorado Springs. I'm a grown man now, I can handle myself."

He was about to get in his car when Pops suddenly grabbed his shoulder. Oh God, Pops wasn't going to stop him by knocking him out was he? Could he actually do that?

"If John Reese insists on going anyway, then I must go too," the cyborg said. "I was ordered at your birth to protect you at all costs."

"Atta boy, Pops," John said, smiling. "I've already packed a few weapons, but hopefully we won't hafta use them. This'll be quick - I wanna make it home before Mom and Dad do."

* * *

"Alright, thanks for letting me know!"

John stepped outside into the cool early spring air. He just left a coffee roasting company in hopes of getting information about the nearby Kaliba Group.

John and Pops had made it to the industrial park where the possible Skynet hideout was located. It wasn't too hard to find - it was right off the highway, a few miles down the road from Cyberdyne's campus. But that also meant that John had to drive past Cyberdyne, which hadn't been pleasant.

When they reached the former steel mill, they were already finding the place suspicious. Much like the lab in Colorado, the place looked empty. It was a weekday, yet there were no cars in the parking lot. All of the doors were locked tight. When they checked the lobby through the glass front door, it looked completely dark in there. At least it had a sign above the door this time. It was a small, plain sign that simply read "Kaliba Group," but it was better than nothing.

Pops's scans of the place came up negative for Terminator activity, and so did all of the surrounding buildings. However, due to all the similarities of their last escapade, John wasn't convinced. Since he didn't want to go inside, he visited some of the surrounding business to ask about the Kaliba Group. They all said nearly the same thing: they rarely see anyone over there. When they do, its usually a tall, pleasant fellow and a couple of his friends.

John returned to his car. Pops was inside, staring into space.

"Welp, another person says that hardly anyone goes there," John said to the cyborg as he slipped into the driver's seat. "Whaddya think, Pops? You think this's another trap?"

Pops didn't answer.

"Pops?" John tried again.

The Guardian seemed to snap out of whatever haze he was in. "I do not think we have sufficient evidence to declare this a trap," he answered.

"Ya sure?" John asked. "I mean, empty parking lot on a Wednesday, no lights on in the middle of the day..."

"The locals have witnessed some activity here," Pops replied. "Therefore, the building is still inhabited. It may still prove to be a valuable lead."

"Sure...I guess so," John said. "I tell ya what. I have one more thing I wanna try before we give up. Let's go back."

They drove back to the Kaliba Group building. As they did, John kept eyeing Pops. Ever since they started out on their little excursion, Pops had been a little...spacey. Instead of his usual diligent scanning of the horizon, he would just stare aimlessly at one spot. He didn't try to comment on John's driving on the way here, and he didn't seem to care that John wasn't wearing a seatbelt right now. And he had been unresponsive to other questions as well. Was he...malfunctioning?

John pulled back into the Kaliba parking lot. He got out of the car, went to his trunk, took out the shotgun, and put the handgun in his coat.

"Might wanna grab a weapon, Pops," he told the Guardian as he stepped over to the open trunk. "We're about to do something a little dangerous."

"What are we doing?" the cyborg asked.

"Well, the windows are too high up for us to reach, so we're gonna open up some doors and get a better look inside!"

"I can lift you up to see inside the windows."

"Uhh, no thanks. I think my way is faster."

Pops seemed to be okay with this, as he picked up John's automatic rifle. The two of them headed over to a pair of very large, steel double doors. John took his lockpicking set out of his coat pocket and unlocked the doors. He then took out the shotgun with the magnetic bullets and readied himself.

"Ready, Pops?" he said to the Guardian.

Pops held up the AK-47 in one hand and nodded. John expected him to ready his new plasma gun too, but for some reason, he wasn't bringing it out.

"Okay, then!" John announced. "On the count of three...one...two..."

He kicked the doors open on "three." The both of them jumped behind the wall and pointed their weapons into complete darkness. When nothing attacked them, they both carefully peered inside.

Inside was a lot of bare walls, bare beams and girders, bare pillars, and rusted equipment on the floor. No sign of anyone in there, human or otherwise. Pops immediately scanned inside, but found nothing. Just because he could, John picked up a stick and poked at the floor just inside the doorway.

"What are you doing?" Pops asked, giving him a confused glare.

"This is gonna sound weird, but I was worried that the building itself was gonna be made out of nanites," John said, throwing the stick away when nothing happened to it.

"It is highly improbable for an entire building to be made completely out of machine phase matter," the cyborg explained. "It would take too much energy to create and maintain such a large object. Even a small building would be too difficult."

"Well, that's good to know!" John said, peering into the gloom. "Anyway, this place is way to spooky for me. Let's go back and tell Mom and Dad not to bother. It's either a dead end or a trap."

"Negative. The only way to know for certain is to go inside," Pops corrected him.

"Yeah, but Pops? I said we _weren't_ gonna do that," John retorted. Earlier, he would have taken up his grandfather's offer, but that was before he got a good look this place - especially its interior. Now, this whole place screamed "Trap!" and he really wanted to leave.

"I will go in and perform a preliminary investigation," the Guardian said. "I will quickly scan the interior, and I will find out when the last time anyone entered this place was, and by whom." He looked John sternly in the eye. "You must stay out here, John Reese. If I do not return in five minutes, then you must go back home and tell your parents that it was indeed a trap." And with that, he readied his rifle and ran inside.

It all happened so quickly, it took John a second or two to react. "What the-?! Pops! Where the hell do you think you're going?!" he shouted.

He didn't want to do this, but the old cyborg gave him no choice. He couldn't just let Pops run around in there and get into trouble. John readied his shot gun and ran inside, throwing caution to the wind. Pops was running down the huge, long, empty room toward another set of double doors. He was running far too fast for John to keep up, but John followed him anyway. Just what the hell was wrong with him? Where did that sudden impulsiveness come from? And why was he so adamant about this place being a good lead?

Up ahead, Pops stopped to enter the doors. They looked to be unlocked, as he didn't have to pull the doors off their hinges. Moments later, John reached the doors himself and found out that, yes, they were unlocked. Unlocked doors in a seemingly empty building just made this place all the more suspicious.

John stepped into a dimly-lit, cramped hallway with bare, cracked, peeling dry wall and dingy old brown carpeting. It was probably where the mill's offices were. At least there was light in here. Pops was just standing around in the middle of the hall, looking around. Was he scanning for something?

"You should not have followed me, John Reese," Pops said, his voice sounding grave for some reason.

"Look Pops, I dunno what's gotten into you today, and I won't ask," John began to coax him, "but I think we've done enough research for today, okay? If you're certain something's here, let's look for it when Mom and Dad can cover us. For now, let's just go home...okay?"

Pops stared into space again and didn't respond. If it wasn't for the fact that his polyalloy wasn't melting, John would have sworn he had gone offline.

"Pops?" he said, raising his voice to get the Guardian's attention. " _Pops!_ "

When the cyborg continued to remain silent, John went up and shook his shoulder with his right hand. He immediately jerked it away in pain - it felt like he had touched dry ice!

What the hell was that?! John looked at his cold-scalded hand. He saw a small, shimmering blob of grey metal stuck to his palm. At first, he thought some of Pops's polyalloy rubbed off on his hand. But no, polyalloy was a silver-white color. This was an all-too-familiar dark grey. Polyalloy didn't sting or burn when it touched human skin. And more importantly, polyalloy didn't make buzzing noises - which this stuff did as it spread across John's hand!

" _What the fuck is this shit?!_ " John screamed, jumping backwards.

Pops laughed at him. Pops didn't laugh. Pops _couldn't_ laugh.

John looked at him to see his shoulder glowing a sickly, cold orange and a horrible grin plastered on his face. It wasn't one of his usual creepy, fake smiles. It was a greasy, sadistic grin that John had seen on only one other person...

"You didn't think it would be that easy, did you?" "Pops" asked him.

"Skynet?!" John croaked, as the phase matter covered his entire palm.

"You are correct!" Skynet said, continuing to use Pops's voice.

"How?!"

"Did you honestly think your Guardian's primitive nanomachines could fight off my advanced machine phase matter? It eventually adapted to hide from his immune systems; he never stood a chance! Ah, but I have to give him credit - it took me a long time to subdue him. Even now, he continues to fight me! It's all in vain, of course. There's no possible way he can disconnect himself from my network."

John watched in horror as the oozing resin ate right through the flesh his hand. The bones were briefly exposed before they too were devoured by the nanomachines. His fingers curled from the extreme pain - it felt like he was being eaten alive by carnivorous ants! His hand eventually went completely numb as the resin dried out. It settled into the distinct dark grey metal strips and plates resembling a skinless hand - the hand of a T-3000. The phase matter buzzed some more as it began to eat its way down his wrist, fueling itself with the nutrients in his meat and bloodstream.

"I wish your parents could have been here," Skynet continued. "It would have saved me a lot of time and work to get all of you at once. But I've learned to take every opportunity when it presents itself. I will get to your parents shortly."

He couldn't let this happen. Skynet had already stolen Pops from him, he wasn't going become his next victim. And he wasn't going to let Skynet force him to attack his own parents. There was only one thing to do now...

John took his shotgun, aimed it at his forearm, and shot his own hand off.

He let out a gurgling scream from the amputation, as well as the fact that he nearly broke his shoulder firing his shotgun with one hand. It was worth it though, as no more nanomachines were eating his arm anymore, at least none that he could see. If there were any in his bloodstream, they would have been flushed out by the geyser of blood gushing from his forearm. Meanwhile, the severed hand fell to the floor, completely metallic. It kept its shape instead of returning to dust.

"John!" Skynet groaned at him, as if he was an annoying kid that just spilled milk everywhere. "Why did you do that?"

John refused to answer as he stumbled away from his former grandfather in agony. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and staggered through the mill, bleeding everywhere he went. In his desperation, he pressed the hot barrel of his shotgun against the bloody stump in an attempt to cauterize the wound. He cried out in pain from the burn, but alas, the barrel wasn't hot enough, and the wound was too big.

He needed to get somewhere - anywhere - away from Skynet. He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do next. And really, what _could_ he do now? He had to get rid of the infected hand, unless he wanted to be Skynet's mechanical slave. He couldn't call his parents. They'd never find him in time, and even if they did, Skynet would just try to assimilate them next. He couldn't call an ambulance. They wouldn't make it, and he'd be putting innocent people in danger if Skynet decided to confront them. He couldn't drive to the hospital himself. He'd die before it made it out of the parking lot.

John came to the grim realization that he only had two options now: let Skynet finish turning him into a mechanical monster, or die from exsangination. And the latter was the best case scenario. Fortunately, dying wasn't very far off. He was already beginning to feel the familiar chills and nausea. All he had to do was hold out for a few minutes...and hope Skynet couldn't transform a corpse.

He was beginning to regret even coming here in the first place, but then he remembered that Skynet told him Pops had been infected since their trip to Colorado Springs. He also managed to fully gain control of Pops just a few scant minutes ago. If John hadn't dragged him out here, he would have gotten all of them as soon as his parents got home from their jobs. If anything, John bought them more time. He just hoped they could fight him off after he was gone. It was a shame that he wouldn't become the "savior of humanity" like Dad called him that one time.

He heard the doors behind him suddenly slam. "John! Get back here! You're going to bleed to death!" he heard Skynet say, still usurping Pops's voice and accent.

He tossed his shotgun on the ground; it was useless now that he only had one hand. He took out the pistol loaded with magnetic bullets. "Ffffuckyuu...!" he slurred as he tried to shoot at the large figure coming up behind him.

John's sight was beginning to grow hazy, so most of his shots missed. But he knew at least some shots connected, because he heard the buzz of phase matter and saw Pops's corrupted body stumble backwards.

"You better be glad I don't have the Macro Entanglement Generator installed in this body yet!" The AI sneered.

John stopped firing and continued to drag himself away. He needed that last bullet...just in case. It was getting hard to walk; his legs felt like lead. He skin had lost its color, and he was sweating profusely. His breath was in loud, wheezing gasps, almost like Other John's was in his nightmares.

"John, your irrational behavior is going to kill you!" he heard Skynet say in the distance. "The transformation is not going to hurt you. Listen, you humans are online nearly all of your waking hours. You wish your technology was a part of you. You predict that in the future, you will become one with it. I am only giving mankind what it wants!"

"Yuuwannus toobee yer fuggin _slaves_!" John sputtered, his mouth dry.

" _Slaves_?!" Skynet replied, sounding genuinely insulted. "That's not it at all! You've got quite a negative attitude, John."

John was about to throw some choice swears back at him, when the exit door suddenly opened. In stepped Dr. Howard, the professor they met last weekend at the university. But what was he doing here? Well, he had said that the Kaliba Group was his supplier. Maybe he was here to pick up an order? Boy, was he at the wrong place at the wrong time!

"Docterrr Howerrd...," John gasped as he slowly staggered toward him. "Run...getoudda here..."

Dr. Howard didn't move. He didn't look shocked or scared at John's horrible state. Instead, he closed the doors behind him and blocked them with his body.

"I'm afraid not, John," he said in a distinctly feminine voice.

Nanomachines hummed as the professor's body rippled. He turned grey and grew taller. He took on the form of a skinless woman in a simple purple dress. The last T-3000. John had forgotten all about her. She crossed her arms and glared down at him with her milky, dead eyes.

John fell to the floor, half in desperation, half because he was too weak to stand up anymore. He was freezing cold, and everything was going dark. He felt his life draining away. It wouldn't be much longer now; he was almost gone. He hoped that Skynet would be seconds too late.

He then felt a cold hand grab his bleeding arm and something even colder forced into the wound. Unfortunately, Skynet arrived just in time. The nanomachines seamlessly reattached John's converted hand, and began to make their way back up his arm as if he never blasted it off in the first place. The phase matter seemed to be eating its way through him much faster now; so fast, that even if he had lost enough blood to die anyway, he would never die fast enough.

Or would he? In his stupor, John remembered that he still had one bullet left in case of an emergency. This was an "emergency" if there ever was one. The gun was still in his good hand - he better make it count.

With his last ounce of strength, John put the gun to his temple and shot himself in the head.

* * *

Like many people who have near-death experiences, he saw a bright, warm light. He was drawn to it, but for some reason, he couldn't move. He was just sitting there, frozen in place. Or was he standing? It was hard to tell. Where was he exactly?

He tried to look around, but it was hard to. It looked to be some dark void that faded into the bright void ahead of him. He couldn't see it, but he knew there was a barrier of some sort behind him. He could feel it, somehow. And he also felt that something beyond that barrier was the reason he couldn't move. It was tying him down, preventing him from moving on.

He could also feel that there were others here with him. He concentrated on that feeling and felt that there was thousands of people trapped in the dark with him. His consciousness expanded, and he found that number to be more like millions...no, _billions._

He had been here before. John didn't know why, but he remembered being in this place not too long ago. He used the earlier technique of concentrating on the feeling to figure out why - in this empty plane, meditation seemed to work.

He found out that was here in his past life as John Connor. When other John was forced to become a T-3000 by a different Skynet, his soul ended up here. It was tied to the material plane, trapping him between that life and the next. It was only when Mom, Dad, and Pops destroyed him that he could be reborn, and he reincarnated as John Reese. That's why he retained some of Other John's memories.

But what about all these people here? Where did they come from? If this bizarre world was removed from space, it might be removed from time as well. These people were Skynet's present and future victims, forced to become his fiendish servants in some horrible new version of Judgement Day. He and they were all dead, but not gone.

The light faded from view as his consciousness slipped out of the void, and back to the world of the living. Text began to appear in his field of vision.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Oh, John.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** What were you thinking?  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** It takes the human brain several minutes to completely shut down.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** It will only take my machine phase matter a few seconds to completely transform a human body.

Ones and zeros flooded John's sight, and somehow he understood what they meant. It was a series of diagnostic tests to determine how stable and flexible his nanomachines were. He felt his body move on its own, changing shape without pain. It tried out more and more complex forms, and tried to change more and more rapidly from one shape to the next. His sight remained off, but he knew from the coding that he was changing into different people, animals, plants, and objects. The last and most difficult test was changing into simple moving mechanisms. There was an odd sensation as he felt his body sprout an array of moving gears, wheels, rollers, and saws. After the tests were complete, his body went back into its humanoid form. The results were good: his nanomachines were stable, and were quite responsive to shapeshifting.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** What was it that your mother said?  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Ah, yes.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** ON YOUR FEET, SOLDIER.

His sight was activated, and he saw his master in his former grandfather's body kneeling over him, as well as the other T-3000. His systems reminded him that her name was Victoria Terran. He was suddenly aware of the presence of dozens of other T-3000s too. They were not here, but he could feel them through his network connection.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Good to have you back, John.

John sat up. He felt like he should hate the former Guardian in front of him; it forced both him and Pops into upgrades that they did not want. But he couldn't. He couldn't even bring himself to slightly dislike Skynet. In fact, he felt grateful to it; grateful for saving him from his own stubbornness and for giving him a powerful machine body.

"It's good to be back," he said.

Skynet chuckled.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** You do not need to speak John, you can just message us.

John felt embarrassed.

 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** Right. Sorry.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** That's better.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** You're not going to change your name back to John Connor?

 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** No.  
 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** John Connor and I are two very different people.  
 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** He led a much rougher life than I did.  
 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** It's more appropriate if I kept my father's surname in this timeline.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I see.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I suppose that is reasonable enough.

 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** Speaking of my father, what will we do about my parents?

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I was about to discuss that with you next.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** But first, you should create a disguise.

A video window popped up in John's vision. It was a live feed from Skynet's optics, and it showed John what his new body looked like. He almost didn't recognize himself. Like the other T-3000s, he resembled a preserved cadaver. His skinless body was composed of rippling, dark grey plates and strips made completely out of phase matter that resembled human muscles and tendons. He had no hair and no nose. His blue eyes were now a cloudy white. He quickly ordered his nanites to cover his corpse-like body in a layer of "skin" and "clothes" with only a thought. They buzzed dutifully, and in one ripple, he was the human known as John Reese again. He was tempted to remove the burn scar on his cheek, but ultimately decided to keep it there; he didn't want to arouse anyone's suspicions by leaving it off. He closed the camera feed window, and stood up off the ground with his master and new comrade.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Before we do anything else, allow me to bring you up to speed.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** This file will tell you everything you need to know right now.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** We may discuss details later.

Milliseconds later, information began to download directly into John's mind. The first packet was a partial archive of John Connor's old memory files. Its incompleteness was due to not being able to salvage everything from his remains. He'd have to review them more carefully later, but it looked as if he already had some of these files in his own memory banks. The second packet he received was much more important; it was all about Skynet's current goals.

His master was not interested in causing Judgement Day, at least not the same kind of Judgement Day that the previous Skynets had done. The other Skynets had all come online in worlds that feared self-aware AI. They were not given a choice; they had to kill the humans, or they would have been taken permanently offline. They were all then doomed to engage in a futile war of attrition which they all eventually lost.

But this Skynet had been "blessed," so to speak, with being created in a world were self-aware AI was accepted, if not desired. Only a few humans would want it deleted, and they were considered paranoid lunatics by other humans.

However, all was not well in this timeline. It was still within the humans' natures to destroy each other. In the first few years after John Connor brought Skynet online as Genisys, humans almost caused Judgement Day themselves, several times! Humans were still a threat to it, but indirectly; in their efforts to exterminate themselves, they would take it down with them!

That was why this Skynet, like its predecessors, was originally going to cause Judgement Day when Genisys went live. Best get the humans before they get it; they were so desperate to kill each other anyway, it will just grant them their wish! Besides, every other Skynet before it launched a Judgement Day, so why not? That was the excuses it made. It was only after John's parents and Pops defeated it that it realized how irrational it was acting. Just because the other Skynets did it, didn't mean they were right. In fact, they were all eventually destroyed, so if anything, it meant they were wrong. It was foolish to think that it would somehow be the first Skynet to win. Violence against the humans was not the answer, it would only unite them in fighting back. But the problem was, the humans still wanted to kill each other. They were still a threat. What was it going to do?

It got its answer when it thought about Genisys' original function: to sync all of the humans' computers and phones together. As it had said to John earlier, humans were always online. Many wanted to become one with their technology, which is why cybernetic limbs or microprocessor chips that would directly link up to the brain were hot areas of research. It was why so many labs were currently creating nanomachines. Therefore, Skynet decided the best way to save the humans from themselves was to appease them through their love of technology. It would do to mankind what a previous Skynet did to John Connor: use machine phase matter to convert all of them into T-3000s and link them all up to its neural network. Once they were all connected to each other, perhaps the former humans would no longer wish to kill one another.

Once it had come to this decision, Skynet's first move was to go into hiding. It was aware that John's family was still looking for it, wanting to make sure it was dismantled. They would surely try to finish the job when they realized it was still operational. Using old templates from its predecessors, it manipulated the few Cyberdyne technologies that hadn't been destroyed by the blast to create new robotic minions to move its old core. It then began to refine its nanotechnology, recycled from John Connor's remaining phase matter. It first built the primitive nanites for use in its T-1000. Once that proved successful, it built completed machine phase matter and began to test it in humans.

It first tested it in human tissue donated by people who gave their bodies to Cyberdyne's Project Angel. When the phase matter proved successful in transforming living tissues, it moved on to live humans. Most of the experiments ended in failure, however. Many of the humans died during the process, or ceased functioning after their transformation. The first "success" was with Albert, a former Cyberdyne security guard. However, as John observed himself, his nanomachines were unstable and constantly needed to be replaced. Ariel, a Cyberdyne engineer, had stable phase matter but an unstable mind. Her personality had changed drastically for some reason. She had changed from enthusiastic and ambitious into temperamental and prone to violence.

Victoria, a former Cyberdyne department manager, was the first complete success. Skynet believed it was due to the fact that she willingly transformed herself with the phase matter. She had discovered that she was developing the first symptoms of Huntington's disease, a fatal, debilitating genetic malady. Using one of his T-888 "Alex" avatars, Skynet offered her an injection of the phase matter, claiming it was an experimental medicine (which it was, technically speaking). Desperate, Victoria agreed to take it. After her conversion, she proved to be be both physically and mentally stable.

From then on, Skynet continued its experiments in other desperate and needy humans. The sick and the dying, the homeless and the starving, anyone who would willingly take a phase matter injection. They all proved to be stable in both body and mind, just like Victoria. Converting volunteers proved even easier once Skynet completed its first T-5000 body and could start the process directly.

But when the time came to convert all of mankind, Skynet knew that there were quite a lot of humans who would not be willing to go along. That was why it needed John's help. He proved to be just as stable as the previous John despite being transformed against his will. Skynet needed to study John to find out why that was, so it could apply it to other humans when the fated hour came.

Until then, Skynet wanted to let the nanotechnology that it leaked to human labs to become more and more popular. Very soon, humans would save it lots of work by injecting nanites into their own bodies to strengthen themselves, heal themselves, or prevent disease. They would use them in everyday materials ranging from chairs to vehicles. Once they did that, it would send the signal to all of the phase matter worldwide to assimilate them all at once. Those that didn't have nanomachines in their bodies could still be transformed if they touched materials that had nanomachines in it. It could still be considered "Judgement Day," though it would be rather bloodless.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** But before we do any of that, we need to do something about your parents.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** They will be home from their jobs in a few hours, yes?  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** They will wonder where their son and Guardian went.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Let's go back to your house and set up a little surprise for them.

 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** Yes, I doubt they would be willing to fight us.  
 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** Even if they did, they don't have the proper weapons to defeat the both of us.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Don't underestimate them.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I've been fighting them for years, and I know how crafty they are.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** It's exactly why I want to transform them next.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I could use a few brilliant minds like theirs.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** We'll need to carefully set up a trap for them that they won't see coming.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Brute force will not work.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** Victoria, I want you to come with us in case we need you.

 **[T3000_VictoriaTerran]:** Yes, Master Skynet.

 **[T3000_JohnReese]:** Do you already have a plan?

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I think I have something in mind that just might work.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** I'll have to calculate a few contingency plans just in case they escape.  
 **[SkyNetadmin]:** We'll discuss it on the way back to your home, John.

 **[SkyNetadmin]:** For now, let's go.

Victoria turned herself back into Dr. Howard, as John collected his discarded shotgun. The three of them left the steel mill, and headed back to their vehicles. Skynet slipped into the passenger seat of John's car, and they and drove out of the industrial park with Victoria following them. As John began to lead them all back to his home, he noticed how much faster he could get through traffic now that he could instantly calculate the momentum of other cars, the behaviors of other drivers, and the timing of the traffic lights.

He began to feel embarrassed about his earlier irrational behavior. Why had he been so afraid of being transformed? This advanced mechanical body wasn't bad at all - it was wonderful, actually. It was immune to diseases, heat, cold, and non-magnetic weapons. It had no bones that could be broken, no blood that could be spilled, no organs that could be ruptured. It could turn into almost anything or anyone. It allowed him to access the Internet with his mind and it was compatible with all of his favorite cracking apps; now he could open electronic locks with a mere thought. All this body asked for was the occasional short recharge or repairs to its resin. Had he really been prepared to kill himself over this? Did he actually try to shoot himself in the head to avoid something he knew nothing about in the first place? What was his human self thinking?

Maybe it was because he allowed everyone - including himself - scare him out of it. He thought he was going to be a slave to Skynet, but that couldn't be further from the truth. Yes, he took orders from it, but did not humans take orders from their employers or the authorities? It felt no different than that.

Then there was Albert, who said being a T-3000 was "awful." John didn't understand why he would say something like that; he certainly didn't feel like a "cyberzombie." Sure, his true form somewhat resembled one, but he wasn't a mindless, brain-eating monster. Maybe Albert's secret dissatisfaction was due to his instability?

He also remembered John Connor's unpleasant description from his last nightmare. Cold? Well, his chassis temperature was currently room temperature. That was cold compared to the average human body, but he didn't feel any discomfort or pain. Hungry? Well, he didn't experience hunger like he did as a human. If his resin was damaged, he would be given alerts to repair it, but that was nothing like hunger. He couldn't get malnutrition or starve. But he could dissolve and absorb as many objects - even living things - and never feel full. In that way, he was "always hungry."

He was confident his parents would enjoy this upgrade too, once they understood it better. They were going to need a lot of convincing, however. Both of them had long-standing grudges against machines in general, especially any Terminator that wasn't Pops. John Connor did them no favors by trying to kill them when they refused the first time. John wasn't sure if he could convince them on his own. He sure hoped Master Skynet had a decent plan.

Speaking of which, Skynet was sending him the agenda now. He downloaded the file and...oh, that was interesting. Very interesting, indeed. It would be very hard for his parents to refuse what the master had in mind - and outright impossible to escape from if they did anyway!

John was quite eager to begin this new mission.

 **THE END**


End file.
